Perfect Marks
by Rurouni Star
Summary: -BlaiseHermione- You can learn anything with a book and a Hermione Granger.
1. Chapter 1

Italian!Blaise, ignoring bits of canon. Plus, cliche. But I had fun.

It _was_ a oneshot. And yes, goddamnit, I'm writing more. I hate my mind.

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

_One._

Hermione Granger, despite rumors to the contrary, absolutely _hated _midterms.

It wasn't because of the tests – or, not directly, anyway – but more for the fact of the week _before_ the tests. As far as she could tell, there was some sort of silent alarm that went off that Monday, a bell to rally the lazy and the ignorant. The week before those semi-finals, her little sanctuary in the library - away from all the noise and hassle of the common room - became packed with students all looking for a seat at a table, or this book or that one. It was insulting. It was rude. It was really just sacrilege.

If she admitted the truth to herself, there was really just one thing that stuck most in her teeth about the whole thing. Namely, the idea that said herd of people had slacked off all semester, and were still hoping – nay, expecting! - to get perfect grades with a week's worth of work.

In any case, it _was _this particular week, and it was this that drove her to make the request that she did.

"Could I borrow the Charms classroom?" she asked Professor Flitwick. "Just for the week? The library is horrible these days."

The little professor beamed up at her from behind his desk. "Of course you can, Miss Granger," he said. "Come by any time you like. It will be nice to have company while I'm grading."

She heaved a sigh of relief, hitching up her bag on one shoulder. "Thank you very much. I promise I won't be a trouble."

"I have every confidence in you, Miss Granger."

0-0-0-0-0

Day one went marvelously well. The Charms room was empty, and quiet, but for the scritch-scratch of Flitwick's quill. Hermione had been prepared, of course, and checked out all the books for her studying ahead of time. She had no doubt that at least one late-comer student was wailing at the lack. It gave her a guilty little pleasure, all told.

And of course, it didn't hurt to have the Charms professor there to correct her little mistakes. He would occasionally look up from his grading to advise her on her pronunciation (rarely) or to make an amused comment on one of the more interesting points of history behind this charm or that (more often). She soaked up the knowledge with enthusiasm, and though she knew she was more than well prepared for her exams, she decided to come back the next day as well. Harry and Ron would be studying furiously, and complaining just as furiously, and it had been a pleasant sort of day compared.

Day two came with an unpleasant surprise, though.

It was perhaps ten minutes after she'd perfected the easy-breathing charm that the knock came at the door.

Flitwick paused again in his grading, and levered himself up to glance at it curiously. "Come in!" he said, in the loudest voice he could manage.

The doorknob turned. A very unwelcome face appeared.

"Sorry sir," Zabini said calmly. "This shouldn't take a moment." He pushed through the door, and Hermione saw that he was struggling to keep about five books under his arm. "There you are," he said, catching sight of her. "Are you the one who took out Vittory's Transfigurations?"

Hermione frowned, and checked the impulse to go hug the book protectively. "I did," she said. "I have it for the next week."

Zabini frowned back, one of the books slipping from his grip slightly. "I need it," he said, as though this settled things.

"They don't have an extra?" she asked, knowing full well that they'd all be checked out by now.

"No, Granger. They don't have an extra. One of them's even been stolen outright, if you can believe it."

She tilted her chin upward in what she knew to be a superior way. "Perhaps you should have tried two weeks ago, then, if you needed it so much. Library policy says not to give away books you've borrowed yourself. Can't help you."

Zabini's eyes narrowed. "I suppose you don't see anything wrong with co-opting the entire library for yourself right before midterms," he said sharply. "I'm beginning to see why you always make top marks."

Her mouth dropped indignantly, and she made as though to respond with another scathing remark, but Flitwick sighed, and interrupted her.

"I understand it's a tense week," he said, in his usual high-pitched voice. "But arguing about such a simple thing isn't the way to relieve stress. Miss Granger, perhaps you could allow him to look over the book in _here_, but not to take it with him. Is that agreeable?"

She closed her mouth, but continued glaring at Zabini – who seemed, in fact, quite content to glare back.

"Fine," she said shortly. "But _only_ in here, understood?"

He nodded curtly, and set the large stack of books on a desk. A quick glance showed that they were all various titles on Transfiguration.

Hermione got up, and headed over toward her bookbag. It was really starting to fray a little from the weight, and she made herself a mental note to buy a new one over the summer.

A moment later, she handed Zabini the book wordlessly, and he sat down against one of the walls to crack it open.

Things settled down again into silence, though it was now interrupted on occasion by the quiet turning of pages. She'd expected it would irk her, to an extent, but she found herself perfectly relaxed instead. Apparently, she wasn't quite such a loner as she'd thought. Company was company, and as long as he didn't talk, everything would be fine.

"Granger."

She sighed, turning to look at him. "What?"

There was a cool moment, where he met her gaze levelly. She did her best not to fidget.

"...what's a lamprey?"

Hermione stared at him for a second. He seemed serious.

It wasn't so much that she believed he knew the answer. It was more the fact that he was asking _her_, and expecting her to just hand it to him on a platter. She had her _own_ studying to do, after all, and she was _hardly_ a walking dictionary. Or – sitting dictionary, in any case.

She became keenly aware that Flitwick was watching her curiously, though. Her ego got the better of her.

"It's a fish," she said. "It lives very deep underwater, in salt oceans. It attaches itself to larger fish with its mouth, and sucks their blood for sustenance-"

He twitched a little. "I think that's good. Thank you. I don't need a recitation."

Hermione pressed her lips together, and turned back to her own book. "In which case you can study on your own. I don't have to tell you anything if you're going to act that way."

Zabini 'hm'ed, but didn't comment further. She was almost disappointed. She'd really expected him to say something suitably horrible back, in which case Flitwick would almost certainly throw him out.

It was once the light from the windows had nearly disappeared that Hermione realized she ought to start heading back to the common room. She got to her feet quietly, picking up her things and stopping to give Flitwick a polite word of thanks.

Zabini was about a fourth of the way through the book, with a sour expression on his face. He'd long since conjured himself up a cushion, and was leaning back in it with a frustrated sort of feeling about him.

"I need the book back," she reminded him.

He glanced up at her, and sighed. "Fine." He tossed it at her carelessly, clearly fed up with what he'd read, and she gave him a fierce scowl.

"You don't need to treat it like that," Hermione said, catching it. "_I'm_ the one turning it back in."

He waved a hand almost dismissively. "All right, Granger. Don't get testy."

This won him yet another furious look, as she headed out the door.

0-0-0-0-0

Day three. Zabini was already there.

Hermione stared at him incredulously, as she headed toward a desk. "What, again?" she asked him.

"I could have finished the book last night, if you'd been a little less greedy," he muttered, just low enough that Flitwick wouldn't be able to hear.

"Greedy?" she said. "_Greedy?_ What, just because I don't trust you not to cut pages out, just to make me look bad?"

He rolled his eyes at her, and pulled a desk chair. "Anyway, I need it, one way or another. You're not using it."

Hermione's face probably resembled a thundercloud, but Flitwick was still in the back of the room, humming as he graded papers – she stomped over to her bookbag and pulled the book out, handing it over. Zabini looked vaguely amused at her response, and this only infuriated her more.

"You," she said shortly, "sit over there. I'll be over here, _practicing._ If you interrupt me, I'll-" She glanced at the book again. "-I'll turn you into a toad."

Zabini raised his eyebrows. "No you won't," he said, still looking sardonically amused. "There's a teacher here. Besides, that's human transfiguration; we don't learn that until seventh year."

She shot him a dirty look, and didn't deign to respond. Besides, she could _too_ turn him into a toad if she'd wanted to. Hermione Granger was _always_ ahead.

And just to prove it, she went over to, very obviously and dramatically, turn the desk into a mouse. That kind of size change was certainly seventh year level. Though, admittedly, it wouldn't be on any exams this year.

Zabini _was_ watching, to her satisfaction. But instead of saying anything, he merely cocked an eyebrow and returned to reading.

She had to chase the mouse around the room for a good two minutes, embarrassingly enough, before he lifted a hand and muttered "_Accio"_ under his breath. There was a squeak as it flew through the air, and Hermione felt her embarrassment multiply.

"I could have done that!" she snapped.

Zabini looked up from his reading. Hermione saw that he'd only gotten a few pages farther. "Why didn't you, then?" he asked calmly. The mouse wriggled a little, and he ran a thumb over its head to calm it.

His question was met with silence. She fully intended to keep this silence, until she realized it only made her look even more silly. "I didn't think of it," she admitted shortly. "Now will you hand it over?"

"Certainly," he said, but he didn't move. The mouse's nose twitched against his palm.

"...well?" she demanded, glancing over at Flitwick for a moment. He was frowning at a bit of illegible handwriting.

"Aren't you going to say please?" Zabini asked.

She felt her temper come close to snapping, at that. But thankfully, it didn't. "_Please,_" she gritted out.

His mouth curved up into a smile. He set the mouse down on the floor beside him. At first, she expected it would start running again, and she had immediate thoughts of retribution. But it merely lay down next to him, pink eyes curious.

"...you're insufferable," she hissed at him, as she scooped the animal up.

"So are you," he replied easily. "But I'd been trying not to get personal."

Day three ended with a perfectly unmouselike desk and Blaise Zabini less than halfway through Vittory's Transfigurations.

0-0-0-0-0

It wasn't really a surprise to find him there the next day.

"I'm halfway thinking of leaving the book at my dormitory tomorrow," she told him succinctly, as she headed inside.

"Please don't," he said. "It would be inconvenient."

Hermione handed it over to him, and prepared to make her way to the furthest corner she could manage.

"Why do you have it, anyway, if you don't need to read it?" he asked her. There was a hint of irritation in his voice, and it gave her pause.

"I was going back over it, to make sure," Hermione said. "You can't be too careful." She pulled another book out, and opened to the index.

"Isn't there _anything_ you don't know?" he asked her with exasperation. It wasn't a compliment. It was more of a complaint, really.

Hermione frowned, taking the question seriously. "Yes," she said, but she didn't elaborate.

A few minutes later, she heard him muttering something at the book her currently held. Considering she didn't know Italian, she couldn't be sure, but it sounded like he was insulting it and its mother. Which was patently ridiculous, unless it had been transfigured itself. This gave her a moment of amusement, until he finally slammed it shut and set it down on the floor.

Hermione glanced over, surprised. He gave her a surprisingly venomous look. "That book," he said shortly, "is useless."

She frowned. "Well why did you come ask for it, then?"

"I was hoping my memory had failed me," Zabini responded, shooting a glare at the book. It didn't glare back. In fact, it rather sat there.

"Just what _is_ your problem?" Hermione asked him. "You know, I could understand being unhappy if you'd studied some before, but just picking up a book the last week and expecting to suddenly _understand _everything-"

"I _did _study, Granger." Shortly. "Get off your high horse. Not all of us are naturally gifted. For your information, Transfiguration is bloody _hard._"

She gave him a startled look, tinted with annoyance. "I'm not on _any_ sort of high horse," she protested. "And I'm not naturally gifted - I _study._"

"Well so do I!" he snapped, his voice rising now. "And it works perfectly well, most of the time, when the _books make sense!_"

Hermione huffed, and headed over to pick back up the book. "It _does _make sense," she insisted, flipping it open. "Look, I'll show you – what part of it were you not getting?"

"All of it!" He paused. Then, realizing that had sounded somewhat childish - "Mostly the first few chapters."

She sighed, and flipped pages backward. "All right, well there's your problem. You're trying more complicated things without mastering the foundation chapters. Of course, most of this is from last year, and I suppose we _did_ have a bit of a ruckus with McGonagall for a while..."

It took her a while to realize that she'd entirely given up her own reading in order to freshen his memory – the one thing she'd sworn _not _to do. He was surprisingly efficient and attentive, though, and the almost instantaneous success was a strong lure.

"See, when you're working with a more delicate transformation, you have to tighten up your wandwork- it's all well and good to make big gestures when you're doing elephants or statues, but you _know _McGonagall prefers mice, so why go unprepared?"

A frown. "That's surprisingly devious of you," he said.

"It's not _devious!_" she said hotly. "It's common sense! If McGonagall always does mice, then why not learn mice very well?"

"Well I'm hardly arguing the point. I was just observing."

Hermione, of course, had time to pause over the fact that Fred and George had used this particular tactic before. Zabini probably didn't know it, but that little phrase sent her into an agony of self-doubt for two nights running. Not that he'd much care if he _did_ know.

"Never mind! Anyway, mice in particular, you have to get the arch of the wand just right. It's a lot easier than birds, but it's still a little tricky."

"I know that part. What about the pronunciation?"

"Um – well, the end syllable should be elongated – that really should be when you're creating the tail. If you get the rhythm right, it all matches up."

He did get the rhythm right. In fact, it took him only two tries.

"For god's sake, why doesn't she just teach it like that?" he demanded, picking up his own little mouse. This one had been created from a wadded up bit of notebook paper; it showed in the coloring. It nibbled a little at his hand, almost affectionately.

"I think your mouse has blue lines on it," Hermione observed.

"Stop picking on the mouse. It's not its fault it was created different."

"I'm not picking on the- oh, for goodness' sake!"

She decided to ignore his little smirk.

"Now what about reversal? What do you know about the earmarks of a bad Transfiguration?"

"If it can't move, that's probably a good sign." It was unfortunate, the way he could say that and still keep such a bland face.

"You _know_ what I mean." Exasperatedly.

"Coloring is the main one." Not mentioning any particular instances. "Followed by missing digits or tails. Inanimate objects usually don't move on their own – that's a clue right there."

Hermione gave him a flat look. "Well. Fine."

Blaise twitched a little as the mouse bit his thumb a little too enthusiastically.

0-0-0-0-0

Day five, there wasn't even any pretension of studying on her own. In fact, the only thing she really brought with her was a stack of old Transfiguration textbooks.

"I feel doted on," Blaise observed acidly, and she frowned at him.

"I could always go deal with Harry and Ron's last-minute panic," Hermione told him. "I don't _have_ to deal with yours."

He shrugged, and held out his hand obediently, and she handed him the fifth year textbook. "Just the last few chapters should be good," she said. "I imagine that's what we missed, mostly."

There was no mention of anything, past sheer Transfiguration, really. He really was woefully behind, due to all the time he'd been practicing bad habits. Thankfully, he was just as adept at playing catch-up as ever, and by the time the sun was setting, he'd reabsorbed much of the problematic material.

There was an awkward pause, near the end, while Hermione picked up her things again. Zabini frowned, a hand in one of his pockets. It almost seemed as though he might have been about to say something to her. But instead, he merely gave her a glance, and headed out the door.

She pursed her lips irritatedly, but was stopped by a tiny hand on her shoulder.

"I'm very proud of you, Miss Granger," said Flitwick.

Hermione found that was enough.

0-0-0-0-0

Hogsmeade that weekend was nothing short of a mass stampede. The students, both frantic from studying and in need of last-minute Christmas presents, could have been mistaken for wild animals.

Hermione, on the other hand, had of _course _prepared adequately for Christmas already. When Harry and Ron gave each other shifty looks, she was fully aware that they were trying to think of a way to get rid of her so they could pick up her Christmas presents.

"I'll go get a butter beer, shall I?" she asked politely. She only barely held back a snort as they both sagged in relief.

"I think so," said Ron. "That's a- good idea. In fact, we'll come join you, um..."

"...after we've taken another look at the Quidditch store," Harry put in helpfully.

Hermione smiled. "I'm sure I'd just be bored," she said accommodatingly. "I'll see you after you're done in the Quidditch store, then."

Funny, that they were headed for Flourish and Blott's instead. She decided to just as politely ignore that part as well.

The Three Broomsticks was packed with people come in from the snow. She had to lever her way through quite a few people to reach the line in front of the bar, and a quick look around convinced her that there wouldn't be any tables free unless half the room decided to vanish the other half. Considering the dirty looks a few people were getting, it might have been a little more likely than normal.

In spite of the large number of people, she was still surprised to find herself stumbling over someone's foot as she turned from the bar with her mug. She recovered herself rather well, she thought, but the somewhat thick laugh let her know that it was someone's crude idea of a funny joke.

Hermione righted herself, checking her jacket and scarf and eying her mug to see if anything had spilled. After which, she turned around to look for the perpetrator.

Hard to miss, really, though which of them it was became debatable. Both had an equally dim sense of humor, and both were rather large. Goyle, though, was a little closer, so she decided to give him the withering 'ha ha' look.

"I thought it was funny," muttered Crabbe, leaning against the bar.

"Oh, shove off," she said, hiking her scarf up on her neck and turning to head for a less populated section of the bar.

The butterbeer went down very fast today, considering the cold temperature, and Hermione was soon staring down at the bottom of the mug with a little sigh. She handed it off to a passing busboy, who looked rather harried, and made a cursory look around for Harry and Ron. Unfortunately, they hadn't yet shown; it gave her the feeling that they _had _made a little stop-off at the Quidditch store after all.

"I don't understand why," she muttered with exasperation, heading for the door. "They're never going to _buy _anything, after all." The cold air hit her as she stepped out, a startling contrast to the warmth of the packed taproom. She shivered, and pulled up her scarf again, covering her mouth and nose.

It was strange, walking through the street alone. She was keenly aware that others were doing it too – mostly to buy gifts unseen – but it held a strange sort of allure to it as well. It had been some time since she'd been able to simply be _alone_, without the burden of occasional conversation or polite faces.

Her steps inevitably took her toward the woods, to the little trail that looped around the Shrieking Shack. Her feet began to sink deeper into the snow, but the cold was still invigorating instead of uncomfortable, so she ignored it for the moment.

Her steps took her up, of course, to the outside of the Shrieking Shack, just behind the fence that kept it sealed off from curious students.

Her thoughts had already headed in another direction entirely when a snowball hit her in the back of the head. She hissed, turning to look behind her; her face turned even darker when she saw the skinny, brown-haired teen behind her.

"Come on, Stibbons," she said, drawing her wand. "We've been through this."

"I'm sure we can give it another try," the Ravenclaw responded, frowning at her. He already had his wand out.

"You'll only get yourself hurt," she warned him, raising her hand warningly. "And in detention. And possibly docked on midterms."

"I can beat you," the boy insisted stubbornly. She sighed, and shook her head, as he began to twist his wand through a series of movements that was probably far above his current level.

A snowball hit him in the face rather abruptly. The fourth year stumbled back a little, blinking through his glasses.

Hermione glanced back toward the Shack. It took her a moment to place the head of black curls, but the fact that he was still wearing his robes gave him away as a pure-blood. The rest followed shortly.

"What've we here?" Zabini drawled, pulling down his scarf. "Two half-pints in one place. This should be interesting." His voice seemed to intimate that he was about to try out a few of the things she'd just taught him.

Stibbons paled, and took a step back. Hermione gave Zabini a perfectly withering look, and raised her wand on _him._

"Oh come on," he said. "He was just about to _attack_ you. Why take a curse for him?"

She heard footsteps thudding behind her. Stibbons was now hurtling through the snow, back toward the village.

"You know, you have a lot of- nerve-" She blinked as Zabini slipped his wand back into his robes.

"Happy Christmas," he said bluntly.

Hermione stared at him. Then sighed. "Not to be ungrateful, but that was an entirely useless gesture. I was about to disarm him. He's harmless."

Zabini, trudging past her, paused for a second.

"That's stupid of you," he said finally. "I'm not sure why I expected better." At her indignant expression, he sighed. "_Anyone _can have a Dark Mark these days, Granger. Considering the spell he was about to use, I'd watch him a little more carefully from now on."

She blinked at him as he headed past, moving for the trail.

His words bothered her, much later, in the dead of night.

_Anyone can have a Dark Mark._

He certainly hadn't ruled out himself.

0-0-0-0-0

She heard, much later, that he had managed perfect marks on Transfiguration.


	2. Chapter 2

Yes. Well. In the end, I couldn't resist.

But if I happen to _possibly, _maybe, take up this fic as a semi-long term thing, I want recompense! So, I'm putting out a challenge, because I have a sudden, desperate craving for good/bad/yummy/stupid/ANY Blaise/Hermione. Ignore cheesy bits at will.

_The Bodyguard:_

Using the first two chapters here, or make your own, if you like. Regardless, Blaise Zabini has become an Auror, and been given the interesting mission of protecting Hermione Granger. I'd like it if it were at least partially due to her help.

_The requirements:_

-Uses both Blaise and Hermione's POV, at some point.  
-Does not have Blaise and Draco being 'old buddies'.  
-Gives Blaise at least one _entirely_ awkward moment.  
-Has a scene where he manages to get a bloody nose on Hermione's behalf. Possibly giving one out as well.  
-Hermione gets at least one triumphant moment on her own account.

There. Someone? Anyone?

**Perfect Marks**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Two._

Blaise Zabini was no longer a problem, nor a thought, nor a memory. After everything that had happened, two or three days during her sixth year barely registered anymore.

She probably couldn't have even remembered his name, until the day she saw him again.

Hermione was twenty – about two years graduated – and currently humming under her breath. It wasn't entirely in tune, but then, Diagon Alley was loud enough during the mid-day rush that no one could hear her to complain.

She'd already picked up much of her shopping. In fact, it had taken her entirely down both sides of the street – twice, because of a forgetful slip at the Apothecary. All in all, it was not a _bad_ day, though, because no one had died yet, or even been maimed, and also, there _was no Dark Lord._

The Death Eaters were still trying to keep it quiet. But everyone rather knew, when the Golden Trio settled themselves down into the semblance of an actual life, one a piece. Their part was more than done; the Ministry could take care of the rest.

And – well, it had done so, for the most part.

She kept her thoughts intentionally light, as she headed for the nearest Floo. She _could_ have just apparated, but it was fairly taxing, and the Ministry could track it. She'd much rather they not know where she lived, all things considered. At least, not yet.

Her light spirits dissipated as she caught the movement behind her once again.

For goodness' sake! Once or twice, she could have called a coincidence, but this was too much entirely. Hermione flipped her wand into her hand, and changed her course, headed for a small teashop, as though on last-minute inspiration. The person at the edge of her vision followed.

It was _probably_ not a Death Eater. They weren't really that brazen anymore. That left a few options, but none of them options she particularly adored. Especially considering the note she'd received from the Order not a few days ago.

Her shadow was male – or at least, she was fairly sure of it. Men carried themselves differently – she had, in fact, been told that she did so similarly at times. Ginny had joked once that Ron or Harry might simply turn her into another boy 'one of these days', for which Hermione had given her a suitably dry look. He was probably at least half a head taller than she was; the distance between them made it hard to gauge. He had been slouching somewhat before, which had made her uncertain, but he was now walking with a purposeful stride, and a clear posture that spoke of practice.

Hermione frowned, and ordered something – the first thing on the list – trying to simultaneously pay attention to her shadow, her wand, and her tea.

A stray blink, though, and he was lost in the crowd again. She cursed quietly.

"Ma'am?" The cashier looked suddenly nervous at her change in attitude.

Hermione gave him a smile. "Nothing. Broke a nail."

Her nails were chewed down.

The cashier blinked, but nodded, and turned to go for a to-go cup.

"Their Earl Grey is horrible. Pick out a different black – you'll thank me later."

Hermione jumped at the sudden voice; not one she recognized easily. She spun, though, her wand at the ready, flipping it up toward the man's throat.

He looked down at it. And _smirked._

"Well at least you weren't _quite_ as oblivious as you looked." Blaise Zabini glanced past her at the cashier, entirely ignoring the wand. "Darjeeling, please," he said, a pleasant tone to his voice. "None of that bergamot in water you lot keep trying to pass off."

Hermione snapped her wand back into her sleeve with a glare. "Your sense of humor is still horrible," she informed him. Even grown, it was hard to misplace him; one didn't forget that very unique blend of physical attributes, of course, but it had mostly been the smirk.

He slipped a bit of money past her, to the outside counter. This was unfortunate. There was a certain age, which she was now well-past, where paying for things gave you the instant upper-hand in a conversation. Zabini had already established his little foothold in their sudden reacquaintance. "When did I make a joke?" he asked. She found the bland tonality just as infuriating as it had been three years ago.

"I _meant_ following me around," she said, temper rising slightly.

Zabini handed her a cup of tea, which she took automatically. The first sip made her twitch a bit in surprise – this was definitely not what she'd originally ordered. The second sip calmed her a bit, though, as she got used to the taste. He was right. It was fairly good tea.

"That wasn't a joke," he said, sitting down with a congenial sort of expression. "I'm being paid to do that."

She nearly spat out her tea.

"What?" Then, with a bit of a choked swallow. "What, you're some kind of wizarding Sherlock Holmes now?"

He seemed amused at her outburst. "Of course not. You know better than that, Granger. I'm an Auror."

This was her second amazing surprise in no less than thirty seconds. She had been careful not to take another mouthful of the tea, though, so it passed only with a strange expression at him.

Zabini blinked. "You mean you _didn't _know?" He looked, for a moment, almost as surprised as she was. He covered it quickly. "I suppose it makes sense, at that," he said. "You happened to be running AWOL around Britain around the time us normals graduated."

Hermione frowned. "What is that supposed to mean? Yes, I was busy. There was a little problem with some Horcruxes. I barely noticed when _Ginny _graduated." She paused, as it occurred to her that he'd avoided, or perhaps merely missed, the subject at hand. "But _why_ are you following me?"

He took a sip of the tea – then raised a sardonic eyebrow. "_Constant vigilance!_" he said.

She sighed, resisting the urge to press her hands to her face. "I can't believe they actually did it," she muttered. "I _knew_ they were recommending, but..."

"Well," Zabini allowed easily, "With certain people, it's not so much a recommendation as a preemptive FYI."

"Well," Hermione repeated him. "You can tell Moody that I'm terribly flattered, and all, but I don't need the extra eyes. I've been taking care of myself for quite a lot longer than _he's_ been taking care of me, and I'm perfectly fine."

"I'm fairly sure that's your choice," he admitted. "But I might point out a few errors in that statement. You _do_ need the extra eyes, apparently. I've been around for three days now; I only let you see me so I could check your reactions." A pause. "Also, because I have a terrible sense of humor."

She blinked – then felt herself flush, in embarrassment and indignation. "That's horrible!" she said.

"I know," he agreed. "You're a very boring person to watch."

Hermione gave him a dark look. "You know, somehow you've managed not to change a bit." He laughed; it held a slight hint of condescension in it, but it immediately showed her the error she'd just made.

He was different from the way she recalled him. Physically, of course, he'd since grown; but his actions and words were a bit more tempered, and the last clinging vestiges of awkward youth in his face had been burned away. Considering his position, she'd have thought... well, she'd have expected a sort of hard determination in him, as she'd seen in the other Aurors. Was he new at this, or had he been in the thick of it already? For how long? Most importantly, _why?_

"I never thought you'd turn out to be an Auror," she said, a tad bluntly. It made her wince at her own tone for a moment.

"That's terribly funny," he said, draining down the rest of the bitter tea without a flinch. "Considering you single-handedly made it possible."

It gave her sudden pause. Hermione took a moment to remember that day, so long ago, when he'd pushed open the door and asked for a book. It took her a moment, still, to make the connection.

"Transfiguration," she said. "Oh."

"I might have made it into NEWT Transfiguration, if I'd blown sixth year," he said with a shrug. "But I do doubt it."

"It took a certain amount of work on your part," she told him. "And... well, I heard you got perfect marks. I couldn't have inspired that sort of thing. Certainly not in two days."

His lips curled upward slightly, but he didn't comment further.

Hermione glanced back down at her tea, feeling the awkwardness set in – at least on her side of things. She wasn't sure Zabini would ever condescend to 'awkward' enough to let it in the door. Or to show it, if he felt it, anyway.

She'd really barely known him, at school. There was a memory of very brief closeness; the kind that can only be shared by two people dedicating every bit of their attention to the same goal. But it had been a very different sort of closeness, and it had gone after that short time. She knew so incredibly little about him that it was almost shameful to be sitting with him, drinking tea like this – as though they were some sort of old friends. She hadn't even known he'd _wanted_ to be an Auror, let alone that he'd spent the past three years working at it.

"By the way," Blaise added, almost nonchalantly, "your cat is very sweet. A Death Eater might even take it home with him, after killing you."

Hermione broke from her thoughts to give him a flat look. "Crookshanks is smart enough to know people. He'd have torn you to bits if you'd tried to get too close to the house." She paused. "You're lucky he didn't anyway, actually. He's not _usually _docile."

She saw the twitch at his mouth again – that expression that seemed to threaten a smile, but never quite followed through. "I'm good with animals."

Her eyes narrowed. "In any case. As I said, I'm perfectly fine on my own."

"No," Zabini told her, "You're not. And I can prove it."

He rose to his feet, abruptly, and tossed away the cup. She blinked as he started for the street, robe swishing a bit. He paused, when he saw she wasn't following – raised an eyebrow. Hermione frowned, and got to her feet, knowing this would probably be meant to humiliate her in some form or another.

Zabini walked with that purpose he'd had earlier, headed toward a certain destination. Hermione considered breaking off from whatever game he was playing to head home, but found that her curiosity outweighed her annoyance. Instead, she caught up with his long strides, and pulled a bag higher on her shoulder.

When he stopped, in front of a certain alley, she frowned.

"What _exactly_ do you want to show me in Knockturn Al-" His fingers closed over her forearm, pulling her forward suddenly. Hermione found herself against the wall, his wand at her throat.

His eyes stared into hers. All traces of any sort of levity were gone.

"Now tell me, Granger..." The wand jerked warningly, as she reached for her own wand. "...am I _really_ an Auror?"

Hermione stiffened, feeling a sudden seed of doubt. With that seed came the warning that she ought to start thinking of her options out.

"I have you in Knockturn Alley," said Zabini quietly, his voice as level as ever. "You could disappear entirely, and no one would know. I could hide your body for a pittance of a price. Or I could leave it out, with the Dark Mark carved into it." The smile did come out, now, and it was cruel. "I think I'll do that."

Her eyes flared angrily – it was the only warning he had, as she thew her elbow out toward his stomach.

It was all he needed.

"_Stupefy."_

0-0-0-0-0

It had been months since the last time Hermione Granger had woken up with such a headache. The last time had, in fact, been the night that Harry and Ron convinced her that drinking seven shots of Firewhisky was a good celebration tactic.

It had been longer since she'd had to wake up from this particular curse. It took her a moment to recognize the signs.

When she did, though, she sat up abruptly, reaching for her wand. It wasn't there.

Hermione frowned, as she realized the incongruity of the situation. She was lying in her house – in her own bed – after being hit with...

Her eyes widened angrily, and she threw the covers off. She staggered just a bit, at gaining her feet, but the adrenaline was enough to keep her up.

"_Zabini!_" she yelled, throwing open her bedroom door and storming toward the living area.

He was there, relaxing on the couch as though it were his own – Zabini looked up at his name, and gave an unaccountable grin. He had both wands in a pocket – and, to add insult to injury, Crookshanks was purring in his lap.

_Traitor._

Hermione stopped in front of the couch, her face pale white with rage. "Give me my wand," she told him, with a furious tightness to her voice.

"Number one," he said, pulling said wand out and giving it a twirl. "You really shouldn't have announced you were awake. If I were hoping to keep you here under house arrest, for my own devious ends, you'd be best served by sneaking out quietly and taking me by surprise."

There were no words for the swell of sheer rage that filled her, on seeing this grin, on this man, on her couch, with _her cat._

"_Get out!_" she hissed, through clenched teeth. "Give me my wand, and _get out_, or so help me-" But he cut her off.

"You're not in a position to make demands," Zabini said. "I thought you'd figured that out. In fact, demanding for me to return your wand is perhaps the _worst_ thing you could do right now. Why should I hand it over? For goodness' sake, I have the upper hand, Granger. _Why_ would I bother listening to a thing you say?"

She let out an angry screech, and threw herself at him.

Crookshanks yowled indignantly at being dislodged, spitting and hissing as he leapt to the ground. Zabini, _almost_ caught off guard, could only react by catching her arms, to keep her hands from getting to his face. Hermione threw another elbow at him, this time aiming for his solar plexus – he twisted at the last moment, using the momentum to drag her around and under him. Without taking a pause, she lashed out with one of her legs, trying to catch him off guard. It was really her only hope – he was much stronger than her, and though she _knew_ she could still take him wand-wise, she didn't happen to have hers on hand.

He had her very neatly pinned, though. Wearing a skirt, she realized, was not helping matters much. It wasn't that she was particularly modest at the moment – it was more for the fact that his knees held the material taut, restricting her movement. She was left struggling vainly against an unshakable grip on her wrists.

They were both breathing hard at this point – Zabini less so than Hermione – but she still found enough left in her to continue talking. Talking was, perhaps, a gentle word for what she was doing, actually. It involved quite a bit more profanity, and a good deal less communication. He blanched, for just a moment, at one of the things she called him, but recovered his easy face not too long after.

After she'd managed to exhaust every article of her quite-impressive vocabulary, he finally spoke.

"Granger," he said. "Your knee is digging into my leg."

Hermione stared at him.

"I'm just mentioning. It's quite uncomfortable." She had the feeling that if he weren't currently holding her wrists down, he would have shrugged.

There really were no words. Or, perhaps there were, but she would probably end up imparting them later, as she was currently _speechless_ at his utter gall.

He sighed. Hermione could feel it brush along her neck – she jerked a little in surprise, and suddenly growing horror. This position – her house – and with her wand gone-

Zabini's brows knit, at the sudden fear in her face. Then, coming to the right conclusion (or the wrong one, as it might be called), he snatched his hands back from her, as though she'd burned him. "Oh hell no, Granger. No. Don't look at me like that. That- no."

Hermione took the sudden opportunity, to ram him in the chest. He choked, caught off guard, as she closed her hand around the two wands in his pocket. In only a few seconds, she was on her feet, and he was on his knees, still gasping for breath.

"Tell me why I shouldn't hex you into nothing," she hissed at him. As far as threats went, it was tame, but the fear in her throat had refused to go away, and it blocked a few more eloquent ones from coming out.

It took him a moment to answer, during which time she kept her own wand pointed at him, with a slightly unsteady hand. When he did finally speak, it held a breathless air to it.

"For god's sake," he said. "I brought you home. I _tucked _you into _bed._ What more do you want?"

"_You knocked me out!"_ she said, incredulous and furious.

"And you attacked me, so I think we're fair now." Zabini made as though to rise to his feet, but she twitched a bit, and he paused. Then, with a shrug, he got up anyway. "I think the point was made, anyway. Would you have headed off to Knockturn Alley with _any_ chummy Slytherin that led you off?"

"You're _horrible!_" she said, and she meant it in a particularly fervent way.

"No," he said. "I'm _vigilant._" His mouth curved again, as he patted an offended Crookshanks. "You haven't changed either, Granger. You're so _naive_. I could have killed you any number of times so far."

"I'm _still_ thinking of killing _you_," Hermione retorted, though it was hardly true.

"Ah well," he said, clearly aware that she was bluffing. "I guess Moody will just have to head down to play bodyguard himself, then." Zabini threw himself back onto the couch, then, and proceeded to entirely ignore the wand pointed at him.

Hermione began, presently, to realize that she was once again losing control of the situation, in spite of the fact she held both wands. Because at the moment, she was beginning to feel patently silly pointing one at the perfectly relaxed man in front of her.

"See?" he said, glancing over at her. "I know what you're thinking. You're about to put that wand down. Have you any idea how stupid that is? Have I proven a word of what I've said yet?"

Hermione made a strangled noise in her throat. "_Would you stop playing mind games?_" she demanded.

"No. I'm making you think. I thought you'd be grateful for that." He brushed his fingers over Crookshanks' back again, not even bothering to look at her.

"You _really_ expected me to be grateful for being knocked out and intimidated and frightened to within an inch of my life?" His mouth twitched. She knew he hadn't. "How the hell can I believe a word you say, then? How can I _ever_?"

Her voice was shaking, now, and she didn't much like it. He gave her a sudden, surprised sort of look. There was a hint of unease in it, finally.

Zabini reached toward her hand. She flinched back, at first, but he made it clear momentarily that he was angling to catch the one that didn't hold a wand on him.

"You remember," he said, almost conversationally. "I told you anyone could have a Dark Mark."

He led her fingers to the sleeve of his right arm; after a moment, she realized his meaning, and caught the fabric, drawing it up.

The skin beneath was entirely unblemished.

"That doesn't prove anything," she said, though some sort of weight had certainly lifted at the revelation. "Voldemort is dead. He's not around to mark people anymore."

"True," Zabini agreed. "But I'm too smart to join a losing side." His hand lingered on hers for a moment, giving it an odd sort of reassuring squeeze before he let it go. "And if that doesn't convince you, there's a letter on the table."

Hermione turned to look, surprised. There was, in fact, a small envelope there. Something she'd overlooked before, in her rather justified rage.

She did her best to open it with one hand, at first. Then, giving up the horrible game entirely, she simply put down the wands and tore it open.

_To the Littlest Gryffindor-_

Hermione frowned at the fact that this name was still used.

_Bet you've met my protege. Who'm I kidding, you're reading this. He's assigned to keep you safe until that little threat I told you about blows over. That's it._

_-Moody_

Her lips tightened, and she wasted no time in balling the message up. Zabini, surprisingly, did not have any sort of amusement in his manner as he watched.

"I'm not a child," she said.

"You act like one sometimes," Zabini replied. There was no rancor in his voice, but neither was there any hint of a joke. "I'm not kidding. You miss things all the time that I'd take for granted. You took the tea from me without even thinking about it. You took just about everything I said at face value."

"A mistake I'm not making again," she said, pulling her wand. At first, he raised his eyebrows, thinking she might be intending to hex him. But she aimed it at the wadded up paper, instead.

"_Incendio."_

It flashed abruptly into nothing.

"_Now_," she said, almost pleasantly. "Get out."


	3. Chapter 3

Sigh. I jinxed myself as soon as I started a oneshot. I should have known it.

I'm now entirely enamored with this pairing. If it turns into the next Hermione/Sirius for me, I'm going to cry.

(And I love you too, Donahermurphy. Feel my pain.)

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

_Three._

There were protests, of course. She would have protested, too, if she had to go tell someone like Moody that the job wasn't going to be done. Funny enough, she felt no guilt whatsoever in doing this to Blaise Zabini.

"Whoever sent that threat wasn't nearly as dangerous to me as _you've_ been," she told him bluntly, as he was herded out the door. "They haven't even talked to me, whereas _you_ managed to knock me out, steal my wand, and turn me homicidal." She paused, one hand on the door. "Good job."

And slammed it shut.

To clarify, there had been threats before. There had been plenty. Oh, she wouldn't deign to say that she received them all, of course – she'd gotten the most, followed by Harry, followed by Ron. It wasn't any big distinguishment between their power, really; it was simply the fact that she was female, and people seemed to think that Harry and Ron would get protective of her. Well. That much was true. She'd stopped sharing her mail with them after the first three.

The only reason this one was different, so far as she could tell, was the fact that it had been sent to someone other than her. She hadn't been told who – she assumed it was Harry. Considering the letter he mailed her after it was revealed, it was most likely.

Both he and Ron had stubbornly insisted that they be allowed to come stay with her, but she'd given back a very firm no. If it had been a suggestion made in good humor, like two friends visiting to talk about old times, she would have gladly taken them up on it (but refused the Firewhisky, this time). Instead, it was two testosterone-driven pigheads who would probably move in and never leave, for fear of her delicate little self being damaged in their absence. It had been somewhat cute, at Hogwarts. Now, it was merely tiring.

Hermione _liked_ her privacy. It was a tendency she'd always had, but it had only grown when she'd been forced to share a room with two other girls, both of them _anything_ but quiet. She had finally settled in to her independence. She _liked _it. She wasn't giving it up.

She was going to have some harsh words for Moody, when she next saw him.

Of all things in her past to haunt her, she'd very little expected that two days of Transfiguration tutoring would give her so much grief. One and a half, if she really made it fair. She _did_ feel a tiny, very tiny shred of pity for Zabini. Having Moody as a mentor had to be inspire some amount of franticness in him. If he didn't come out of this little relationship totally paranoid and antisocial, she'd be surprised. Actually, it seemed he was already well on his way.

Crookshanks was sulking on the couch, when she got back. She gave him a pointed look.

"Cozying up to the enemy?" she asked him. "Where's the loyalty, Crookshanks?"

He mewed - a low, snuffled sound - and rolled over to give her room. She sighed, and sat down. There was a mostly-content cat in her lap, soon after.

0-0-0-0-0

So maybe he'd gone a bit too far.

A bit.

Moody had told him to surprise her – jolt her out of her complacency. You're good at that, he said. So, he'd done his level best (though, no, not his absolute best, because he probably could have set her to crying). And... yes, it had gotten just a little, tiny bit out of hand.

He felt justified, though. Hermione Granger had shown him, not once, but _twice_, that she was a complete fool. Oh, in academic matters, she was still unrivaled, considering her job, but ask her to take on any less than honest opponent and she'd be doomed. Fairness had no place in fighting for your life. Common decency was not only redundant, but dangerous. Attention to social pleasantries was even worse.

To be fair, Moody had also said that she'd received more than one threat in her time. That did tend to make things look less imposing. But there was a grave difference in this one, something that she seemed to have entirely missed.

The war was not over.

Oh, most people thought it was. Those who noted the sudden, cheerful lack of Dark Marks in the sky; the people who had celebrated Voldemort's ultimate demise, then promptly settled back into their old lifestyles once more. But the truth of the matter was much more complicated. Moody had explained his view on it, and Blaise had agreed with him.

Without a leader to drive them on maniacally, the Death Eaters had receded from view, to bide their time. Best evidence was that some of the higher ranked ones had created a committee sort of rule, no less strict than Voldemort's, but with the illusion of democracy to it. It would have been an easy matter, to step into that sudden power void. The Death Eaters were afraid, suddenly bereft of their immortal figurehead, and in need of direction.

So they had gone underground, and waited for people to relax. This didn't mean that they had stopped killing and controlling people – only that they had begun to do so in less flashy ways. Many of the 'natural deaths' he'd been sent to check on had the tell-tale signs of badly concealed poisoning. Moody had picked these out shrewdly from the others, further cementing his respect for the old coot.

The important question, though, was not so much 'what have they done?'. It was more what they were _going_ to do.

_Eventually,_ Moody had said. _They'll have to come into the open again. That's in the nature of a war. But they'll want to do it with a bang, and they'll want to do it in a way that reacts to their past failures._

What better bang than Hermione Granger's mangled body?

Hence why Blaise Zabini was following her to work the next morning, under a slightly altered Disillusionment charm.

"Morning," said one of the men he'd passed – he didn't use his name, because he didn't know it. The feeling of familiarity was entirely fake. The man took a moment to try and figure out _how_ Blaise was familiar, but gave it up after a moment. He nodded back briefly, as though he hadn't noticed the slip, continuing up the steps of the library.

Blasted things. There were a horrible lot of them.

Hermione was carrying a large bag of books herself, today, as she headed up. That much, at least, hadn't changed. In fact, her bookbag was in such blatant disrepair that he could almost imagine it was the very same one she'd had in her sixth year. No, that was silly. Looking at her load, she'd probably worn down similar bags at least once a year. She really was a book fiend, and not even in the usual, amusing sense of the phrase. Hermione Granger _devoured _books. She'd probably only checked that pile of giant tomes out the Friday before.

Blaise sighed, taking the double doors after her. His thoughts kept taking strange, unwieldy turns. It was probably because he hadn't had to focus on an extended mission for so long. Technically, he was supposed to remain stringently vigilant for as long as he was told to. This went double for someone under Mad Eye Moody's reign. In practice, though, _everyone's _mind wandered at some point.

"I told you, you've got a very boring life," he muttered at Hermione's back. She didn't react. She wasn't supposed to.

He sighed, and headed for one of the more concealed tables near the front – then settled himself in, prepared for a long day.

0-0-0-0-0

Hermione could have been any number of things, had she so chosen. In spite of the fact that Scrimgeour and Harry were on fairly terrible terms, she'd had multiple moderate-level positions offered to her in the Ministry. The research departments had been particularly interested, and the Department of Mysteries had, in an almost unprecedented manner, offered her work as a contract advisor on certain of their works. She had, however, finally reached a point where she'd burned herself out. She wrote back to the Ministry in a politely apologetic manner; to the Department of Mysteries, she'd given a more heartfelt letter, intimating that she might be interested within the year, if they still needed her.

In the meantime, though, her instincts led her somewhere unavoidable. There was a library that needed her.

Haggard Library was the largest library in London. It was the _only _Wizarding one. To her (admittedly strange) delight, it was also the most disorganized.

Since being hired there, she'd spent many hours dusting shelves, reorganizing books, and refreshing the card catalogue. Her predecessors had followed the more classic model of wizarding libraries everywhere – the one that said as long as the librarians knew where things were, it was all perfectly fine. She'd differed in opinion considerably. Within a week, she'd scrounged up an obscure system of organization they'd used at the library of Alexandria (the one the muggles _hadn't _seen). Her few compatriots seemed uneasy about the sudden change, but said very little about it - Order of Merlin did that to people. For herself, she couldn't even remember what class they'd given her.

Hermione was still in the process of reorganizing, of course. It was quite a library. She adored the constant feeling of progress, though, and the chance to look through the collection for interesting volumes; the things this place held still staggered her, on occasion.

Of course, they usually didn't get too many visitors during the earlier hours of the day. She usually liked to talk with them when they _did _come in. The man in here today, though, had sit down at one of the back tables, indicating that he didn't want to be disturbed. In truth, he really didn't seem that interesting anyway.

She shrugged, and shifted back to the stack of returned books. Shelving seemed to be entirely in order.

0-0-0-0-0

The hours dragged on, and on, and on. At some point, he decided to pick himself up a book, partially to keep up the semblance, and partially to alleviate the boredom. Out of a sense of irony, he decided to take another look at the Transfiguration book he'd once perfectly frustrated himself over. It took him a time to recall its name, but the library _did_ have it. Had it been arranged in the usual fashion, he never would have found it – but he'd never been in the library before the change, so he hadn't the capacity to appreciate this nuance.

He sat down, thus, with _Vittory's Transfiguration_, and inwardly groaned at himself.

This was all so horrifically simple, looking back at it. She'd probably thought him a complete idiot.

Then again, the training methods Moody used were rather memorable. You never really forgot a lesson, once he'd pounded it into you in his own unique way. Dark recollections of what had happened to this Auror or that one, because of the lack. Blaise had even gone so far as to organize curses morbidly in his head by which poor Auror had been killed, driven insane, or turned temporarily inside out by them. Everything he'd ever learned about the Cruciatus curse was now rooted in the word 'Longbottom'. Most people wouldn't have approved. Then again, most people didn't participate in raids on dark wizards, or Death Eaters. Most people never even saw a dark artifact; it took a person of particular caliber (insanity) to try to disenchant one.

_Well,_ he thought, staring at the book with a sigh. _You wanted something challenging._

At least, he thought that was why. Mostly.

"Oh _honestly,_" Hermione muttered, startling him a bit. He glanced over, and soon relaxed. She was looking at the inside of a book, not at him. "Marking up books is so... impolite."

Blaise resisted the urge to spell a little joke onto the one in front of him. Not because she'd disapprove, but because she might notice. He might have been disappointed that she hadn't seen through the disillusionment yet anyway, if he hadn't spent a month perfecting it.

In the meantime, he set aside the book and decided to give her a closer look instead. He'd already done so a few times, of course, but it never hurt to be thorough. In fact, he'd been required to take note of a new detail regarding one of his partner's mannerisms every day, back in training. They drilled it as habit, so you could recognize the signs of an impersonator. Or, occasionally, impersonate someone yourself.

Hermione _was_ unique, of course. Everyone was. But she was, in ways, even more unique than the norm. He threw that thought away as a sort of oxymoron, almost idly. She'd mostly been inside her house over the weekend, which limited observation, but he'd already picked up on a few of her more obvious habits. For one thing, she carried herself in a very different way – somewhere between the straight, confident steps of a man, and the swaying, balanced hips of a woman. Strangely, she tended more toward the former when there were other people about. As though it were a sort of unconscious adjustment, to make people listen to her more seriously.

Serious. That was another one. He'd barely ever seen her smile. Not because she wasn't happy or content or any such thing, but because she seemed to find it frivolous. Her smiles were all for utility – to put someone at ease, or to catch their attention. Bit of a waste, really. She had nice teeth.

He blinked at the thought, and shook himself a little. Right. Vigilance. Certainly. His mind was clearly wandering from lack of food.

Speaking of which – wasn't it far past lunch?

Didn't this woman ever _eat?_

No indeed. She was happily shelving books, at the moment. Funny that she seemed to take such pleasure in organization when she let her own life get so disorganized. Her hair was frazzled and curled, coming out of the lopsided bun she'd shoved it into with her pencil. And though she seemed to take an inordinate pride in fresh clothing and regular bathing, she didn't seem to understand the meaning of the word 'iron'. This little ironic detail would have amused him, perhaps, if he hadn't been so hungry.

Blaise glanced at the clock impatiently. Surely, she was just going to go for a late lunch. Perhaps her shift ended early enough that she just went straight through it.

Such logical assumptions were dashed when she went back for another full cart of books.

"Blast," she muttered suddenly, grabbing at a seemingly random book on the shelf. "If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times- this one goes in _Arithmancy_." She added it on top of the cart with an irritated exasperation.

_Funny_, he thought. _That book got more consideration that the threat on her life._

Well. He'd never claimed to understand Gryffindors.

One of the doors at the front pushed open, while she was busy with the cart. The first of the after-work crowd was headed in. Blaise shrugged, looking away and thinking suddenly of his very empty stomach. Hermione glanced up, and headed toward the desk.

_Maybe I'll see if I can lure a Ministry elf into making the trip for me..._

Blaise stopped the thought abruptly, realizing the sudden way his thoughts had been diverted.

He pushed to his feet quickly, taking a run for the desk. The man was gone – Hermione was reaching for the book he'd left behind.

0-0-0-0-0

Hermione sighed, rubbing at her face a little. There were plenty of books to be reshelved, still, and though she didn't mind the organization, she _did_ get a bit bothered when people didn't listen. The system was immensely simple. It would take a fool or a person rushed to get home to botch things up. She had a suspicion as to which it was.

The day was so incredibly slow today, too. Well – Monday, it was to be expected. She'd rather hoped to have _someone_ to talk to, though. She'd met some of the most interesting people in this library. The man at the table wasn't saying a word, though. She had the feeling she'd seen him somewhere before – perhaps he'd been in some other time – but he must have been terribly quiet then as well, because there wasn't a single thing about him that captured her interest.

So it was that when the door opened behind her, she sighed with relief. Even a quick hello-goodbye would be nice. She liked quiet, yes, but true silence tended to be unnerving after a bit.

When she turned, though, there was no one there. She was disappointed to see that someone had merely left their book to be checked back in.

Hermione headed toward the desk, waving her wand once to disarm any return charms on it. She reached toward it, intending to add it to the existing cart-

She let out a surprised yelp as someone grabbed her by the arms. Her wand was already in hand, but there was a strong, familiar grip on her wrists that kept her from directing it. Her eyes stopped sliding around – she narrowed them angrily.

"I thought I told you to-"

"Out of the way," Zabini said, cutting her off. She found herself speechless as he seemed to toss her aside rather easily. He had his wand pointed at the book that had just come in, and hissed a dark-sounding word.

For a moment, nothing happened. The silence of the library crept back in slowly, draining out the excitement and leaving only resigned irritation behind.

Then, there was a scream.

Hermione's eyes widened; she covered her ears, trying to block it out, but it seemed to slip through her fingers, ignoring flesh and bone to worm its way into her consciousness. She saw Zabini flinch – his own hands moved to do the same as hers, but he only allowed one to do so. His wand, he kept out. There was a sharp gesture, and another inaudible word through clenched teeth, in the midst of the sudden wail.

The sound cut off abruptly.

It caught them both off-balance. Like a ship ducking beneath a wave, and coming up again. It didn't affect her much – she was already on the ground, she realized. Zabini gave a funny sort of sway, though, as he overcompensated for some imagined force, still ringing in his ears. She thought she heard him mutter something like 'Williamson, poor bastard'.

Hermione found herself unable to speak.

He turned after a second, having caught himself on the desk - his face was inscrutable. She had the sudden insight that it probably meant he was feeling uneasy.

Zabini offered his hand, then. Hermione recalled herself on the floor. She took it, a little shakily, and he pulled her up.

"Wha-" She swallowed. "What was-" Her voice sounded strange in her own ears.

He pulled something from the book – looking past him, she saw that it seemed to have its pages burnt out in some way. It took her a moment to recognize what he offered out, between two fingers.

"...a Mandrake leaf...?"

Zabini grinned, suddenly. It had a strange humor to it - she felt him sway a bit more, as he put a hand to his head. "Disgusting magic. I'm sure you don't want to know."

Hermione frowned. "Of course I do. I always want to-"

He pitched forward, quite suddenly, with a groan. Hermione blinked, surprised, and moved forward to take some of his weight. Her knees buckled as she caught him – she realized belatedly that he'd actually gone unconscious.

...she'd just had to call it a boring day.


	4. Chapter 4

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

_Four._

Upon waking, naturally, the first point of business was a groan.

Something shifted, on his eyes. Warm and wet. A cloth, likely, for one reason or another. His head was pounding. It gave a little painful jump, as he shifted, and someone tsked.

He was pushed back down, as he gave the attempt at rising.

"Not yet. You should really give it a few more minutes."

Blaise frowned. That voice – that bossy, clipped tone. It all came rushing back, and he gave another groan - this one laced with something between humiliation and unhappiness. "Damn it, Granger, let me up."

Hermione sighed, clearly disapproving. She was going by some sort of instructions, likely. God only knew which ones. He ignored the pounding in his head, and peeled the cloth from his eyes. The sudden light was staggering, somehow _more_ light than usual. He could see her clearly; the frown that tugged lightly at her mouth, and the look of further irritation behind _that._

"I _did _tell you," she asserted. "Any sort of stimulation of faculties is likely to be uncomfortable."

She sounded like a textbook. He could tell she was holding something back.

"All right," he said, understanding. "Out with it."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you talking about _now?_"

Blaise twitched a little as her voice rose, but stayed where he was. Where he was seemed to be a couch, probably somewhere in a back room of the library. "You're looking at me in that superior way of yours," he said. "You really want to say something to me, I'm sure. Some sort of 'I'm sorry, but you're somewhat pathetic'."

Hermione frowned. "I was _not-_"

"You were." He took satisfaction in her sudden discomfort. "However, if you'll recall, I was directly in front of the blasted thing."

Her frown deepened. "I was going to say no such-"

"You're not listening. You weren't going to, but you _wanted_ to." There, he'd nearly recovered his dignity. Confusing the issue nearly always worked.

Hermione huffed, a hand on one hip. "Maybe I shouldn't have bothered, if you're going to be like this about it. Besides, you seem to have conveniently forgotten the fact that you were _spying _on me."

Blaise, currently resisting the urge to put a hand to his forehead, gave her a look that clearly said 'you're crazy'. "If I hadn't been there, you'd be dead now."

He'd honestly expected her to have a retort for this as well. In direct contrast to those expectations, though, she fell very suddenly silent.

It gave him a moment's pause of his own, while he examined the unexpected circumstances that had led to him gaining the upper hand. This was an inordinately strange thought, considering his forehead was still slightly damp.

"You really didn't realize?" he asked her.

Hermione swallowed, but didn't say anything.

"They make those books out of a couple score of mandrakes," he informed her, unconsciously searching for his wand. "The bonding agent is human blood, of course – for some reason it's a terribly good unguent, or else just stylish. Then, at some point-" He gestured vaguely. "-their death screams get free of the pages."

"That's-" Hermione gasped. "That's _horrible!_"

He nodded. "It's rare to see one, since they take so much preparation, but I know at least one Auror-"

"-killing a bunch of helpless creatures, just to- to- it's terrible! It's no wonder what Muggles think of us, considering the kinds of horrible things people keep doing-!"

Blaise didn't catch the rest. He was suddenly staring at her in an entirely new light. The changing of his attitude was a meticulous, carefully recorded process; it is broken down below for your convenience.

Firstly, Blaise opened up the little notebook in his head that had the words 'Hermione Granger' penned on the outside. The first page was short, with mostly faded words and very sketchy dates. It went something like this:

_Circa 9 yrs ago: Some Gryffindor. May be Muggle. McGonagall loves her._

Then, below it, in slightly clearer handwriting of the mind:

_Circa 8 yrs ago: Is Muggle. Beat every one of my marks. Every teacher loves her, bar Snape._

Largely, she fell off the little journal's map until his sixth year. There were a few comments there, followed by a rather sizable number of mental pages dating back to about a week prior. Currently, he added another little comment in a slightly messy cursive:

_Today: I recant all mention of her intelligence. Granger is mad. Wide-eyed, Mandrake-hugging mad._

At some point during this sequence (which really didn't take quite so long as you might imagine) Hermione had actually stopped to give him a _concerned_ look. As though he were the one that needed help.

"...are you all right, Zabini?"

He continued staring at her for a second. _Me?_ he wanted to ask. _What about you? When was your invitation to Mungo's psych ward lost in the mail?_ He suppressed the words instead, with what he thought to be admirable forbearance.

"Perhaps you ought to lie down a bit more," she said slowly, giving him a look over. "I'll go make some tea..."

Blaise felt himself pressed back into the little knitted pillow as she rose to her feet. He allowed it, in spite of the indignity, and even allowed the little damp cloth to be pressed back to his forehead.

He thought, for a bare moment, about sending an owl to Moody. _This one's hopeless,_ he might say. _And she refused anyway._

The thought disappeared, soon enough. Not only would Moody's response be appropriately scathing, but the idea behind it all was still as relevant as it had been before. And then there were debts, and long-held reasons, and other things entirely...

She was moving about behind him, clanging carefully through a cupboard of pots and pans, trying to find the teapot.

Blaise pressed a hand to his eyes and tried to dull the dim ache in his head. He caught a bleary vision in between of what looked like his wand, laying on the table next to him.

"You're still dead-set on being an independent?" he asked her. The tone was nonchalant, but it held a tiny scathing note in it; courtesy of the thought that she'd been masquerading as a genius, when really she was just an oblivious little sheep. Baa.

He heard the clank of the teapot, as she set it down. There was a pause, and he knew she was thinking hard. "I don't want Scrimgeour's protection," Hermione said after a second.

"My name's not Scrimgeour," he told her. "And I'm not half so ugly."

"First," said Hermione, in a contrary sort of voice, "You're a paid employee of the Ministry-"

"Not well," Blaise supplied, but she only continued louder.

"-and secondly, whether or not you are attractive is beside the point. _And _a matter of opinion."

Now that was hitting below the belt.

"My face isn't criss-crossed in scars, at least," he told her, lifting the edge of the cloth to glance back at her. "The only person that beats Scrimgeour out in the 'human quilt' department is Moody."

Hermione gave a little 'hmph', which meant she had no ready response for him. He could see her back as she ducked and stretched, looking through the cabinets for tea. The pencil in her hair was well on its way to a suicide plunge; wisps were already coming loose in a hundred dozen places. She followed her wordless declaration with a slight hop, as she tried to reach the top shelf for an unopened package of Earl Grey. She wasn't terribly short for a girl – in fact, if it hadn't been for her natural presence, she'd be quite physically unnoticeable in every way. It was really her intelligence and determination that set her apart, and that...

He sighed, as she gave another jump at the tea. "_Accio."_

The little box flew through the air, to land squarely in his palm. Blaise sat up again, offering it out while he rubbed at a temple with his other hand.

Hermione looked at him with a sort of horror on her face that he'd only seen a few times before. It was the expression she wore only when she'd been one-upped.

"You're very intelligent," he told her flatly. "Possibly a genius." She blinked as he tossed the box at her, and hurriedly went to catch it. "But you have no common sense - not a _whit_."

He could tell that she desperately wanted to prove him wrong. He'd _long_ observed that need in her; the knee-jerk response whenever anyone told her she was less than perfect at something. But the fact that her mouth didn't open, and her eyes darted to the floor – it meant that she was taking a look at herself. That she could find no way to refute it.

"...well?" he asked. It was brutal to press the matter, he knew, but the bluntness was necessary. Sparing her feelings wasn't something he was terribly worried about for the moment.

Hermione hesitated, her eyes still on the ground.

"I'm fine on my own," she said. But he heard, this time, the tiny note of capitulation in her voice. It was a last token resistance.

"You're _vulnerable_ on your own," he told her. "And the worst thing you could do at this point would be to refuse free help."

She lifted her eyes, and he saw that she wasn't quite beaten down. "What kind of help?" she asked, with a hint of defiance. "What _exactly _does this help entail, Mr. Zabini?"

He pulled the cloth from his forehead entirely as he sat up, dropping it on the table and picking up his wand. His mouth turned up very slightly.

"Why don't we discuss that, Miss Granger?"

0-0-0-0-0

The conversation that followed was lengthy, and surprisingly amenable. Up until the end, at which point he had a pot of tea upended on his head.

It wasn't exactly lukewarm. He had to do his best not to wince.

"_Excuse me_," Hermione said hotly. "Perhaps my hand slipped." It was followed by a harsh _clang,_ as she threw the pot toward the opposite wall and stormed out of the room.

Blaise flicked a drop from the hair that hung in his face.

"All right," he murmured, a smile tugging at his lips. "You've got no common sense, and I don't know how to leave well enough alone."

It was his fault, of course. He'd expected her to react badly to the thought of him staying in the house, but she probably wouldn't have done the tea had he not made a suggestive-sounding comment about Harry and Ron having done it before.

Good-natured teasing had been a bit much for her. Probably because, as she'd said, his sense of humor was horrible.

With a sigh and a shrug, he levitated the teapot into the back sink and did his best to clean up the couch. For himself, he was admittedly stumped. _Scourgify_ did unfortunate things to the affected skin, while _Evanesco _was hell on clothing. He finally did a simple charm to dry the worst off, and resigned himself to smelling strongly of bergamot for the rest of the day.

Hermione was already packing up her book bag as he dragged himself out of the back room. The burned book was still set on top of the desk, tiny wisps of smoke curling up from its pages. He was glad she hadn't gotten rid of it yet. It would make things a bit easier.

Blaise reached past her to pick up the book bag, throwing it over one shoulder. She gave him a furious, suspicious look, which was entirely correct in its suppositions. Books were as good as hostages to Hermione Granger.

"Settled, then?" he asked, as though he _hadn't _just had a teapot dumped on him.

She snatched at the bag, but he pulled it out of her way. "I'm protecting your books," he told her with a serious tone. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to..." A glance. "_A Treatise on The Longterm Effects of Repeated Bonemending_." He had to hold down the heavy sigh. She was nowhere near training to be a Mediwitch. _Why?_

"You wouldn't _dare,_" she told him.

He glanced innocuously over at the smoking book. "Oh goodness. You've forgotten to clean that up, Granger." With a wave of his wand, it flared again, and disappeared.

She stared at the little scorch mark on the desk – all that was left of the Mandrake book.

When she didn't reply, he hefted the bag up a bit more. "Horrible waste of a book," he added.

Her eyes narrowed.

She picked up her wand.

"Don't you get _any _ideas about that Treatise," Hermione hissed.

He raised his eyebrows. "I won't steal your book. I'm not interested in something whose title is longer than a return address." Then, with a slight pause. "Were you wanting to actually eat something before you go home?"

She flushed. "You're _not_- I would rather eat dinner with a-"

"Mandrake?"

He could feel his good cheer returning already.

Her eyes narrowed again. He ignored them, and stepped past her, for the door.

When at first she didn't follow, he shook his head, and glanced back. "You'll follow me to Knockturn Alley, but not to a restaurant?"

Hermione muttered something very unflattering under her breath, and began to stomp after him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** God, I'm so sorry about the time lapse. Technically, I'm taking 12 credit hours this semester – but a lot of them are... how should I say this... a total lie. I have one lab that counts for a single hour, and takes up to four, not including outside work. DIGITAL LOGIC I HATE YOU.

Okay. I feel better.

Long story short, trying to make myself feel productive and useful again. Voila. If you need a layover between chapters, read the Dresden Files and get as addicted as the other five hundred zillion of us are.

0-0-0-0-0

_Five._

"Oh, I see. This is what they call the silence treatment." A pause. "You know, I've never really understood the point of that. Then again, I happen to like a good silence. Makes things very peaceful, especially on a day like this."

No response.

"Then again, I expect you haven't entirely thought this part through, like many other things. For example, when the waitress comes over to take your order, you'll look terribly silly just sitting there and glaring at me like that. And seeing as I haven't a clue what you'd like to eat, I'm just going to have to order for myself and assume you'll get by. Of course, I'm sure watching me eat will be a little discomforting as you didn't have lunch-"

"Do you ever shut up?" Hermione finally demanded.

Blaise's lips turned up as he leaned back into his chair. "Often. You must simply bring out the talkative in me."

She made a frustrated little noise, and he attempted to restrain a laugh. It turned into a less-than-convincing cough instead, which only seemed to peeve her more.

Hermione Granger was not a threatening person. In fact, right now she looked like an angry little mouse. Squeak.

"-not kidding," she was saying heatedly. "If you're going to keep acting this- this- _juvenile,_ I'm just going to have to body bind you and throw you in a closet somewhere."

"Wouldn't stop me," he told her easily. There were ways of getting out of a body bind, naturally. "And which of us was just having the 'I'm not talking to you' fit, hm?" He took a sip of water while she opened her mouth angrily to respond – but the waitress had made her way over, and she had to postpone the scathing rhetoric to order a salad.

Once the waitress had gone a good distance, though, she started up again as thought nothing had interrupted her.

"This is what I'm talking about!" she hissed. "This, exactly! It doesn't matter that we both know you're being a total – a – horrible person," (he had the feeling anything stronger than 'damn' would make her blush uncontrollably), "-because somehow you always turn it back on me as though _I'm_ being discourteous-"

"Did I ever call you discourteous?" He managed an injured tone, and she narrowed her eyes.

There was another long stretch of uncomfortable silence before the food came. This time, she actually got him to blink once or twice.

"...I have never wanted to commit murder before," she told him finally. "You're lucky there's people who'd miss you."

He flashed her a grin in return, which seemed to catch her slightly off-guard. In point of fact, it took _him_ a bit off-guard. The muscles felt almost neglected.

_How long has it been since I smiled?_

Not the smirk he tossed around. That had been hard-practiced, meant to unnerve people when he needed to. He found he couldn't remember the last time he'd really smiled at something, even just in amusement, and it took him aback a bit.

"...plus, Moody would complain," she said quickly, making up for her pause. "He'd probably make me help him train your replacement."

"I doubt," Blaise told her, brushing away the strange turn his thoughts had taken. "He'd say I got what was coming to me. Let my guard down." He tapped at the side of one eye. "I'll keep an eye on you too, then, Miss Granger."

She blinked, and seemed once again caught off-guard. Their food came before she could find a securely witty response, though, and the conversation had to give way to two rather famished appetites.

0-0-0-0-0

It was a novel feeling, being _let in_ to someone's house. In fact, it had a slight hint of something less-than-modest, until Hermione shot him a slightly suspicious look. After that, the discomfort seemed to subside.

Blaise took note of the wards on the house as he stepped through them. He'd gotten in on his own before, of course, but he'd been carrying its owner at the time, which had mitigated just about all of them. Apparently, she'd made no provisions on whether she had to be conscious or not – a mistake, he thought, he would never have made. He'd have to prod her into updating those wards soon enough.

The second thing to catch his notice was the layout of the house. You always wanted to know the entrances and exits, but more than that, you had to know the defensible positions, and the places where a person could easily conceal themselves. A closet by the front door took his notice almost instantly. A good place to hide, if you wanted to ambush someone coming through it.

Once, he would've considered this very methodical, paranoid train of thought to be just shy of crazy. Actually, it still struck him as such, sometimes, but it had saved him more than once by now. This long-term planning was one of the things he was particularly good at, and one of the very few things he'd ever gotten a compliment out of Moody for. The man was grudging with his praise, but you always knew he meant it.

Blaise had already pulled out one of his many mental journals to copy the house out on when Hermione looked back at him.

"What _are_ you doing?" she asked.

He blinked, disrupted. "Thinking," he said. Her brow knitted.

"Well could you close the door, while you're thinking?" she asked him. "You're letting all the cold air in."

Blaise realized this was so, and only barely managed not to flush. Granger was supposed to be the absent-minded one, not _him_. He turned to kick the door shut with a seemingly idle gesture, as though it weren't important.

She sighed, and flicked her coat onto a nearby coatrack – which reached out to catch it, when it didn't quite reach. He had his wand out and pointed at it, his position shifted quickly into something more defensible.

Hermione was _staring_ at him. As though he were an idiot. He suddenly felt it in her gaze, soaking into his bones, even nudging itself a very little bit into his heart, where it beat.

He flicked his eyes toward her. "Anything else you forgot to warn me about?" It was easy to shift the blame. Very easy. He saw her frown slightly, shaking her head at him, but the little bit of humiliation had nestled itself deep, and wouldn't quite disappear.

"The towel racks are like that as well," she offered, pulling down the pencil in her hair. "It was easier than picking them up every morning."

He tucked his wand back away. "Surprises around Aurors are generally bad," he advised her. "We're trained to deal with them in various nasty ways."

Her mouth quirked, and she tugged one hand's fingers through some of the remaining tangles in her gold-brown hair. "I can see that. Considering you're sleeping on the couch, then, I might advise you that the house settles at night."

Blaise frowned slightly, but she turned from him after that, apparently planning to cloister up in her room for the remainder of the night. He had somewhat expected that. He had been almost positive about the couch. It _was_, in fact, all his fault, but he'd never expected to be welcomed as a precious guest anyway.

"There you are. You're supposed to keep warm after a shock like that anyway." He blinked, and turned, as Hermione handed over a stack of blankets and pillows that reached over her head. "The bathroom is down the hall, first on the right. If you come into my room at any point, you'd best have a good reason." A pause, and she eyed him from a few inches below. "I'll be up around eight. But you knew that."

He managed to nod a bit, as she rubbed at the tip of her nose. Something about having her hair down had made her softer, maybe. Or maybe she was tired. Or maybe...

"Goodnight," she said, a little abruptly.

"...goodnight," he repeated, almost automatically.

The sun was barely setting, outside the window. But after another, slightly awkward moment, she did as he had expected in the first place, and headed back to her room.

Blaise set the stack of bedding down on the couch, then sat down after it, the house's layout temporarily forgotten. Instead, another of Moody's various lessons floated across his mind.

"_Just stay away from women,"_ his mentor had growled, after suffering through a tongue-lashing from one of the Ministry's secretaries for blowing up her desk-plant. "_The Auror ones are usually all right, but even they have their crazy moments. And besides that, they just muck everything up in general."_

He wondered why that had suddenly come to mind.

Blaise checked through his little mental journal, with the name _Hermione Granger_ on the cover. Each page, methodically, where he had stored his first impressions, his second impressions, his analytical grievances with her lack of common sense and surplus of intelligence.

Nowhere – _nowhere_ – had it mentioned that she was female.

He remembered the curl of her hair around her face. The little quirk at the corner of her mouth. The way the dimmer light softened her features, made her look more... more... her age. His age. Exactly his age.

Oh dear.

He decided, suddenly, that those things ought not to be added to his list of observations. That it would, in fact, probably be better if he forgot about them entirely.

But as he settled against one of the pillows, eyes blinking into the falling night, he failed to realize that he was still contemplating that snapshot clear image of her in the gold-red light, a little curl brushed up against her cheek.


	6. Chapter 6

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

_Six._

"I'm late!"

The sound of frantically thudding footsteps, from down the hall. One could just imagine her hopping on one foot (yes, like that) trying desperately to pull on a sock. Tugging fingers through her hair quickly, eschewing the brush for expediency's sake. Her hair probably looked something like a rat's nest. And now, that was probably the sound of her grabbing her coat and scarf. In fact, if one wasn't mistaken, one would think that was the sound of the coat rack fighting back stubbornly.

Blaise smiled blandly, and sipped his tea.

"You!"

He waited for a moment, as though expecting that she'd been addressing the nonexistent gentleman next to him. After that imaginary man failed to respond, Blaise finally turned his eyes on her with a sanguine, almost saintly curiosity.

Hermione's eyes narrowed.

"_You,_" she said again.

"Me?" He affected some amount of confusion.

"You didn't wake me up."

Blaise raised his eyebrows, nursing his tea with an affected sort of look. "You said I shouldn't come into your room." A pause. "Besides, I thought you had a muggle device that woke you up."

"An alarm clock!" she seethed. "Which I _forgot_ to set because _you_ were... were..."

"I was what?" He took another sip of tea, while somehow managing to keep the expression of faux concern on his face.

"_Annoying me!_" she hissed. "Deliberately! Like now!"

"Oh," he said. "Well. I'm sorry." And took another sip of tea.

Hermione made a strangled noise, which he seemed to ignore.

"You know," he added languidly, "if that clock is right, you've just wasted three more minutes yelling at me, Miss Granger."

Her eyes darted toward the clock, and he saw the battle start in her eyes. Clearly, she wanted to _excoriate_ him for his supposed bad manners – but the thought of being anything less than perfectly efficient was just as clearly a total agony for her. After a moment, the second won out (as he had expected), and she settled for giving him a final, furious glare as she whirled toward the door.

Blaise waited until the door had slammed behind her. Then, in a very relaxed, unassuming manner, he set his cup in the sink and disappeared.

0-0-0-0-0

"Who does he think – and talking like that, and making that _expression_-" Hermione took long, hurried steps toward her destination, her feet hitting the concrete with all the force she could muster – unfortunately, very little. "I won't stand for it. I _won't._"

She had felt hope, sometime very _very_ briefly last night, that this whole situation wouldn't be quite so bad as she'd first expected. That it might, in fact, be very nearly bearable. He'd seemed to settle down from those infuriating mind games for a bit, and yes he'd _seemed_ (dare she think it) to actually relax into something like good-natured teasing. But of course it didn't last. No. He must have simply been tired. And for god's sake, she couldn't deal with him if he was going to be such an aggravation for the other twenty-three hours of the day!

Hermione turned a corner, nodding to herself. She stopped at the crosswalk almost absently, having come this way a hundred times already. It must have rained sometime last night – the streets were despicably wet and muddy, and the sky was a bit of a nasty gray.

Right. The first thing she would do when she got home would be to write a scathing letter to Moody about his stupid, evil apprentice. Then, she'd just make a copy of it and send it to Harry and Ron. Now _that_ would serve him right. Maybe she could actually make _use_ of their overprotective instincts this time.

"And then," she muttered fiercely to herself, "I'll throw a book at him." She paused in the middle of that thought. Then - "Not a very good book. Not one I like. I'll find one of those thick romance novels, all littered with purple prose. Hah! Yes, precisely. Let's see mister 'I'm a professional Auror don't try this at home' deal with _that!_"

It was precisely at this moment, when she had just begun to cross the road, that fate decided to add an ironic twist of lemon to her day.

An ear-shattering blast of a horn made her jump in shock, clutching at her chest. Her first thought was for the two books that had fallen from her bag and into the wet street. Her second was something like: _Oh dear, I believe that's a car horn._

In the name of the ineffable universal cliche, she fully expected that it would hit her. After all, there were really very few things more hilarious than evading a super secret, super forbidden dark artifact only to be hit by a car. Ha. Ha.

But as it turned out, the universe must not have had its coffee yet this morning. The car swished directly past her, and merely splashed her with two liters of muddy water.

Hermione twitched. Then- "No. No, this is fine. I'll just hit him harder for this." It was naturally Mr. Auror-Zabini's fault that she was in this state. She hadn't the time to get properly dressed and caffeinated, after all, which meant that she had to hurry, which meant that she was peeved, which meant that she wasn't paying attention.

_Entirely his fault,_ she thought with a grit of the teeth. This was a somewhat illogical train of thought, but her scapegoats currently consisted of either him or herself, and he was a bit more appealing right now.

Hermione picked up her books with a sigh at their condition (_I'll have to see what I can do about that later,_ she thought) and quickly pushed her way out of the middle of the road.

She wiped at her skirt a little halfheartedly, balancing her books carefully inside the crook of one arm. A few drops of brownish water trickled out from the material. There was a low whistle and a snicker from some undiscernable direction as she inadvertently showed a bit of calf.

"Oh _really_," she muttered with exasperation, trying to balance her books and hitch the strap of the bag up at the same time.

"_Look out!_ Out of the way!"

She blinked, looking up, but something rammed her into a wall before she could quite see what was going on. Something scratched at her elbow, and she hissed in pain.

A speeding messenger bike ding-dinged its way past. Another of her books tumbled gracelessly to the ground.

So. There really was such a thing as getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

Hermione grabbed the books up with a string of almost-curses, fully aware that she was already looking a wreck. God _forbid_ she should make it to work unmolested, after all...

0-0-0-0-0

"Hermione, we were beginning to think you were si- oh dear. What _happened?_"

Hermione stomped past the bespectacled, middle-aged woman, whose expression had quickly turned from pleasantly surprised to slightly distraught. Her shoes made little squelching noises as she walked, and her hair stuck to her face in uncomfortable places. The less that was said about her bag the better, her expression seemed to say.

"This," she declared, "has been the worst morning I have _ever_ had. And do you know why?"

"Er... why?" the older woman asked tentatively.

"Because," Hermione said, her voice rising. "Because of _one_ stupid, smug, selfish, _arrogant_ -"

"Goodness, Granger, what happened to_you?_"

Hermione's brow twitched slightly. Her hand clenched the bag's strap a little more tightly. Her eyes narrowed to furious-looking slits.

"Simone," she said to the older woman. "What you are about to witness is not murder. It is, in fact, utterly justified retribution."

Blaise blinked without much change in expression as Hermione started looking for her wand. It took a moment, which he gave her. Her clothes were soaked, and sticky, and muddy in some places, and when she finally found her wand, stuck deep in one pocket, it was slick with rainwater.

"Er... Hermione?" Simone asked gently.

"Not now. Not now." Her narrowed eyes focused on Zabini, who was doing absolutely nothing to stop her. Why was he doing absolutely nothing to stop her? Was he laughing at her? Was that it?

"Dear... Hermione..."

"Not now, Simone. Give me _two seconds._"

Why was he wearing a tie? Why did he have a pair of disgustingly expensive-looking reading glasses in one pocket? Why did he look- look- like he had every right to be here?

"Oh yes," Blaise said, as though on afterthought. "I nearly forgot. The Ministry requested that I get this library up to standards for them." He seemed entirely nonplussed by the wand at his throat. "You understand. We're looking at using it as an official reference area for the Aurors..."

_Bullshit! Bullshit!_

She felt her eyes widen in a spectacularly helpless fury. It was actually rather a good thing that the repetitive word in her head came out as merely a 'murgh' of a sound – it could have instead been something that would have shocked the older woman beside her into a heart attack.

Simone looked between the two of them uncertainly, for a moment. Blaise took a hand from one pocket and nudged the wand almost absently from his throat. "Would you like to get cleaned up, perhaps? You're dripping."

"Oh dear," Simone echoed herself. She gave Hermione a worried look.

"...perhaps you should get started on the shelving, Simone." Hermione's voice came out unnervingly clear and steady as she stared at the Auror opposite her.

Simone hesitated again, but seemed to decide that she ought not to get involved in such a personal quarrel. She stepped back, and headed for one of the carts slowly, as though unconcerned.

_This day,_ Hermione thought,_cannot _possibly _get any worse._

A snapping sound reached her ears a moment too late. A wet bag of books tumbled to the floor beside her. Blaise glanced down, and raised an eyebrow.

"Not. One. Word." Hermione's face could have frozen water at that point, she was sure.

"...I didn't say anything," he replied innocently. The tiny, smug little tug at the corners of his lips told a different story.

For a moment, she thought he was going to turn and leave her to deal with things, laughing all the way (well, inside, at least). But then, in a perfectly smooth gesture, he knelt down to sweep a few books into his arms.

This was puzzling. Also, slightly alarming. He had a history of taking her books hostage _already._

"Zabini..." She wasn't sure whether to put a warning tone into it or not. Instead, it came out more wobbly and confused and uncertain.

He glanced up at her, with raised eyebrows. "Yes?"

It didn't hold an ounce of the smugness from before. It was... normal. Curious. _Yes, what do you want, is there something in my hair or sticking to me that I ought to know about?_

She shook her head slowly. "Ah... nothing." He shrugged, and slid a few books back into the broken bookbag. Blinked at one or two that seemed a bit waterlogged. He seemed to see nothing wrong with the fact that he was kneeling down awkwardly in the middle of a wide, open floor, picking up wet books. And in fact, while it would have looked incredibly awkward for her to do so, for him it was merely a smooth, easy continuation of his usual careless grace.

For a second, she hated him for it. Shortly after that, she felt a little tug of something entirely different, which she ignored.

"I would say the book police will be after you," he said finally, standing back up with the bag in his arms. "But you probably lead them."

Hermione forced her thoughts back on track, and frowned at the direction they had gone. She had been_exceedingly_ angry with him not two seconds prior. Why did he have to go and do a thing like be... vaguely gentlemanly? It really wasn't fair, all things considered.

"I'm going to have to do some serious spellwork on at least one of those," she sighed, reaching out to take the bag from him. For some reason, he ignored her, and turned as though she were merely walking in the same direction as he was.

"Shouldn't take you long. You're terribly good with academic work." It didn't seem a compliment. Not really. More of a... statement. He'd said something similar in that way before. Perhaps he just didn't go in for normal compliments.

She wasn't sure how to respond to that sort of tone. Thank you? You didn't thank someone for telling you how high they believed Everest was. Well, unless it was during a Muggle Studies NEWT.

"...maybe an hour," she conceded finally, as he headed through a door behind the desk. He set the books down on one of the tables, and glanced over at her. The room still smelled faintly of bergamot.

"...the Ministry didn't send you to check on the library," she accused. Her voice was a little less angry, though, and a little more confused.

"Of course not," he shrugged. "But how else am I supposed to stick around? Coming in every day during your hours would be a bit conspicuous. Probably slightly impolite as well."

Hermione's brow knit. "So you... just made that up entirely?"

"Oh. Well... yes. Actually." His mouth twitched. "Who do you think is going to bother checking? And even if someone did, who would they ask? People in the Ministry are always convinced that they don't know half of what's actually going on." He paused. "Actually, they're pretty much right."

Hermione stared at him for a moment. Then shook her head. Then stared a bit more.

He frowned. "What? What is that look for?"

"I... I'd never have thought of it that way. I mean... I know as well as anyone how horrible the Ministry bureaucracy is, but I wouldn't have... thought to use it like that." _Because I'm a good person and I don't lie,_ she thought to herself with a sort of hopeful justification. But another part of her was – in spite of _everything_ – utterly impressed. It was a very different sort of intelligence than her own. But effective, and impressive nonetheless.

He grinned, suddenly. "Of course you wouldn't." His palm patted her head. "You haven't even noticed that your shirt is entirely see-through."

Her mouth fell open in surprise – quickly followed by indigence. _Was that why he carried-_

An overlarge robe dropped over her shoulders. Dry. Warm. And good god, this still smelled of bergamot as well.

"Aren't you lucky you have me about to act as your common sense?" he asked her, his mouth twitching again in a smug way that was suddenly very slightly less infuriating.

She sighed, and shook her head at him again, hitching the robe up over her shoulders. "Yes, fine. Have it your way."

He gave a low chuckle, and pushed back through the door. And thoughts of vengeful letters were suddenly, strangely, replaced with the worry of _how in the world am I going to keep this from Harry and Ron?_


	7. Chapter 7

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** In celebration of no more finals. Yay.

Also, the turn-around that you _knew_ had to be coming.

_Seven._

The little journal in his head marked 'Hermione Granger' was getting a little too full.

There was the way she bit at her lip when she wanted to say something but thought it too rude. The way she sometimes tugged at a curl when someone was being difficult. The way she leaned into her hand just _so_, when she was really concentrating on something.

He couldn't even berate himself for not paying attention to his work. She _was_ his work.

And currently, she needed a lot of paying attention to. He frowned as he thought of the multiple near-misses she'd had just on the way to work. He'd had to divert a car, slow down a speeding bike, _catch a baseball_, and (in all seriousness) disintegrate a falling flower pot.

_Extra note: Hermione Granger is, for some mysterious reason, the most accident-prone woman I have ever met._

He frowned, and looked up from the desk he'd been sitting at. It took him a moment to realize he'd just been utterly distracted by his own thoughts. It took him another to realize that the object of those thoughts was standing in front of him with a cart full of _books_.

"If you're going to be here," she said. "You're going to work."

It didn't have quite the same bite with his slightly overlarge robes hanging off her shoulders.

"I _am_ working," he said, leaning back into the chair. His mind was already drifting again, to a dangerous little thought about her legs, and what a shame it seemed to be that she never wore anything that showed a little more of them.

_Another note: Hermione Granger could probably stand to wear something that doesn't go all the way down to her ankles. I very much doubt the sight of her legs would make me complain too much, and in fact might give me something pleasant to look at upon occasion-_

He stopped that thought abruptly, his face freezing with something approaching horror. Hermione, who had been talking, stopped with him.

"_What?_" she huffed. "It's not that bad, you know, and I really could use the help."

He muttered something back, trying to keep his face from betraying the thought he'd just had. It was only after she'd shook her head at him and whirled about to grab a different cart that he realized he'd said something along the lines of "No, no, I'll help, that's fine."

Damn it.

He pushed to his feet, scowling a little. This whole situation with her was getting a little ridiculous. So what if she was attractive in a strange, overly articulate, less-than-girlish way? He'd dealt with attractive women before. He'd sent some _very_ attractive women to _prison_ before. This didn't need to be such a distracting point of business.

Blaise watched as Hermione checked the spine of a returned book, that same chestnut curl brushing over her cheek. She looked over at a shelf, then checked the book again, as though to be certain. Her feet took her over to the nearby ladder, which she stared at it in an almost suspicious way.

"Zabini?" she said questioningly.

He blinked, and tried not to panic. He'd been staring again, a bit. It was stupid to think she wouldn't catch on eventually, and he'd shortly never be able to properly infuriate her again if he needed to-

"Could you possibly take this up for me? I'm... I seem to be somewhat clumsy today."

Oh thank god. "Hm? Oh. Yes. Certainly." She glanced over at him strangely at his distracted tone, and he forcibly composed himself. "Though I must say, the job description said nothing about protecting you from yourself."

"Ha ha," she muttered, passing the book on to him. "It'll be next to _Hippogriffs in the Wild_. There's a number system."

He shrugged, and headed up the ladder, wondering whether she'd done something horrible to it. No, that didn't seem like her. Still, it did seem strange that she'd asked _him_ to do it, considering his track record of, er, humiliating her whenever she spoke. He found the spot she'd mentioned shortly, and pushed aside a few books to put _Semi-Avians and Their Relatives_ back where it belonged.

Hermione had narrowed her eyes at the shelf with a funny expression when he came back down again, brushing off his hands.

"All right," she said to him. "You stay here. And... get ready to... do something."

He blinked.

"What exactly are you-"

"I'm trying an experiment." Hermione pushed past him to grab the ladder, and began to clamber up it empty-handed. Blaise slipped his wand from its holster with a bit of confusion, vaguely hoping that this experiment didn't involve dropping books on his head.

He glanced up once he had it firmly in hand, hoping not to be caught off guard. And paused. Oh my. That was an interesting view, and a funny sort of answer to his earlier thoughts-

There was a sudden _crack_ as Hermione reached the top rung of the ladder. She seemed to be almost expecting it, and in fact had a rather good grip quite a few rungs at the time. Unfortunately, it seemed that the ladder had somehow broken off from the _shelf_, and Blaise swore as he tried to get through an incantation in time.

Hermione didn't make a sound as she fell. In fact, when her feet stopped just a few inches from the floor, hovering, she had only a very dark frown on her face. "Oh, that tears it," she muttered angrily.

Blaise tried not to clutch at his chest. "What- _what was that?_" It was almost as though she'd engineered the damn accident – it was really _too_ ridiculous, on top of everything else. He was heavier than she was, and the thing hadn't even creaked!

She scowled at him, tapping her foot impatiently in midair. "Oh? You don't know?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking!" he said frustratedly. Then, realizing he hadn't let her down yet, he allowed his wand to drop. Her shoes landed almost soundlessly on the floor.

"I suppose I shouldn't expect you to, after all," she sighed finally. "It's mostly an academic idea; not used terribly often. Did you ever hear of those nasty mirrors Lydia the Baleful used to curse? The ones that gave you seven years' bad luck?"

He frowned, and nearly stuffed his wand away – but thought better of it at the last moment, and kept it out instead. "I hadn't before. Now I have."

"I imagine this is an extension of the idea. With some decent Arithmancy and enough people helping out, you could probably exacerbate things to a mortal level." She cracked her knuckles gently, and glanced at the fallen ladder.

He raised his eyebrows at her. "And you entirely failed to warn me about this _why?_"

Hermione shrugged, heading over toward a cart still full of books. "I wasn't sure. It's rather a lot of work and effort to be put into killing one person, isn't it?" She picked up a book from it seemingly at random – then hissed and dropped it, to suck on the new papercut it had given her. "And the little accidents are _not_ helping my mood at all."

Blaise moved to pick up the book she'd dropped, with one last glance at the ladder on the floor. It was a horribly thick tome, with a barely readable title on the cover, and none on the spine. With a slight squint, he saw that it read "Historical and Mythological Curses, A Through F".

"It probably won't be in that one," she said, past her thumb. "I thought I'd check the number on it. It'll be... oh... in the M's, I imagine, under 'Mirror'."

He nodded slowly, and took note of the number on the book's spine. It seemed to have been enspelled into the leather as a gold-glowing gilt, floating over the material.

"Eventually," she muttered, "I'll just be able to summon them by subject. But they're not all done yet."

He blinked at the book.

_Correction: Hermione Granger can sometimes be marvelously ingenious. But only sometimes._

"All right," he said, flipping through the curses just in case. "So you think you can dispel it?"

"No," she said idly, pulling another book off the cart and glancing at its spine. "I certainly won't be able to, as I'm having a particularly horrible spell of bad luck today. You'll have to."

He ignored the pun, almost entirely sure that she hadn't meant to make it. "All right. I can do that."

"Oh," she said. "Good. I was afraid you hadn't taken any Arithmancy for a moment."

Blaise froze, somewhere in between 'burning soles' and 'burping curse'.

0-0-0-0-0

Typical. _Typical._

Hermione huffed, as she grabbed another set of beaten up reference books from the Arithmancy shelf. Auror protector indeed! Wasn't Arithmancy a _required subject_ for Aurors? No, no – they'd changed that, hadn't they, in the mid 1900's? Right, with Grindelwald's ascension. Put them through training more quickly, throw them on the front lines, replace the dead ones with fresh trainees, rinse and repeat. Of course the Ministry would never have bothered to reestablish a good precedent, because it was _more inconvenient!_

Which was all really one long, frustrated thought as she released the books in her arms onto a reading desk, with a very loud _thud._

Zabini, at least, had the good sense to look vaguely sheepish. It was a different expression than the one he'd worn so long ago, when he'd demanded a Transfiguration book from her and continued on to take her exacting instruction as something he naturally deserved.

"I can't _believe_ they didn't require some Arithmancy training of you!" she said heatedly. "For goodness' sake, it's a _necessity_ for undoing the more complex curses!"

"Which don't come up as often as the less complex ones," he managed to point out. "Seeing as most Dark Wizards would rather not learn the stuff either."

"Arithmancy is not that difficult!" she protested, sitting down shortly in a chair. "It gets the reputation, you know, just because people fail the first year-"

"Are you _kidding_?" he demanded. "Almost three quarters of the class failed the first year!"

"-and perhaps the OWLs are a bit more exacting, is all," she added, frowning sharply at him. She didn't speak the rest of her mind, which was something along the lines of "_Kingsley Shacklebolt is a very efficient Auror, and you don't see _him _fudging up Arithmancy equations, do you?"_

It was unfair, after all, to compare Blaise to Kingsley Shacklebolt. Shacklebolt had graduated in the top ten of his class, and he'd quite a bit more experience in the field. Besides, she somehow doubted Mad-Eye Moody thought much of Arithmantic solutions – considering the number of scars on his face, he probably solved such momentary troubles by simply barreling through them.

Zabini did, at the least, have some experience with curse-breaking. Someone like Simone couldn't possibly have taken on an advanced Evil Eye curse (an alternate name for the thing, contained in the first volume of _Historical and Mythological Curses_ after all). This without even taking into account that it was a mutated version of the curse.

"You can't possibly mean to teach me advanced Arithmancy in one day," Zabini said, frowning at the books.

"No," Hermione said. "Of course not. I've got an hour to do it – after that, lunch ends and I've got to get back to work."

He stared at her. "You... can't be serious."

"I am very rarely anything less than serious," she told him shortly. "Now here – this is the first book. It's got some very straightforward examples of number association and a few simple equations in chapter one that you'll probably need to know. You'll have to look that over while I read up on this curse a little more. I'm still not entirely sure how you'd do a linked curse over such a distance."

Zabini glanced at the page she'd shown him with a kind of pained expression. He looked up again at her statement. "They'd use something that belonged to you, naturally. It's inexpensive, and very hard to counter."

Hermione frowned at him. "I don't exactly make a habit of leaving my things around for people to take," she said.

"No," he shrugged. "But you take your trash out every week. Or – hell, they could just grab your newspaper. It wouldn't be a very strong link, but it would still be there."

She stared at him. "You can't be serious," she echoed.

"Of course I am. But then, I'm often not, so I understand your point of view." He turned the book around to face her. "Now what the hell does this... circle mean?"

Her face turned a few shades of despair. "It's a number circle, Zabini. It's not even basic, it's _elementary_. Even Lavender and Parvati could do it." They'd learned it from Witch Weekly, to tell each others' daily fortunes.

"Well I _suppose_," Blaise said sharply, "that you are going to have to humor me and explain it anyway."

Hermione blinked, and looked up from the desk at him. His expression was tight, and his muscles had tensed. It was the first time she'd ever heard him speak angrily about anything at all – and certainly the first time that he'd done so in such an obvious way.

"Would you please focus?" he said impatiently. The edge in his voice hadn't entirely disappeared yet, though he seemed to be trying to pretend it had never existed.

"...fine," she said. "Yes. We'll start from the very beginning, then."

His mood did not seem to improve with this statement.

0-0-0-0-0

After a quarter of an hour, she was still trying to get him to draw a logical solar circle. At twenty minutes, he became very obviously insulted when she asked if he could please write his name (she'd _meant_ to ask him to transcribe it, but he hadn't exactly taken it that way). At half an hour, she found she had to stop, as he abruptly got up to stalk away from the table.

"There's a much easier way to do this," Blaise said darkly, pulling his wand. "And I ought to have simply done it in the first place, instead of listening to you prattle on about astrological nonsense-"

"_Excuse me?_" Hermione said, pushing to her feet.

"-and in any case, if I have to listen to _one more word_ in that superior, know-it-all voice of yours, I'll have to kill you myself, _and then I'll be out of a job!_" He jabbed his wand toward her then, with a gesture that she recognized, and her eyes widened.

"Zabini, that's a _really bad idea-!_"

Her warning didn't exactly come too late, but it did go entirely unheeded. "_Exsolve!"_

Hermione brought her wand up at about the same time the wash of purple light reached her. "_Declino!_" she said quickly, but she knew it would only catch half of it, if that. There was a strange ringing noise as it touched her, and a bright flash as the two spells reacted – rather badly. A table behind her fell to pieces as its nails all popped at once. The books on the shelf about twenty feet to her right went tumbling to the floor in an avalanche of paper. She took a single, faltering step backward, and looked down at herself in horror.

There was a long silence. Zabini had the gall to blink at her.

In a deceptively calm voice, she said, "Do you have any idea how utterly, absurdly _impossible_ you have just made things?"

From his face, she could tell he was searching desperately for a witty retort that would entirely turn the tables on her – and not finding one.

"Simone!" Hermione said, addressing the older woman behind her. The other librarian jumped, surprised from her hiding place behind the nearest shelf, whose books had unanimously decided to dive for the floor. "I'm going home for the day. Mr. Zabini will be needing a cart of Arithmancy books."

"Oh _dear_," Simone murmured to herself.


	8. Chapter 8

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** The reader said, "I don't understand."

And the author said: "Well of course you don't understand. I haven't explained it yet."

_Eight._

"You just had to do it. You just _had_ to do it, Zabini. God only knows why you thought you could bulldoze your way through a spell that _at least_ five people weighed in on (yes, if you had taken Arithmancy you could have figured that out with _ease_) but you did! And you did! _And I am now so utterly screwed over that I cannot even find an adequate adjective for it!_"

Hermione nearly slammed the door to her small house behind her; thankfully, she had the presence of mind to realize that it might just bring the entire damn house down on her head. Instead, she closed it very quietly and very gently, with a hand that trembled in fury.

Blaise opened it rather carefully after her, and stepped inside. They were both rather soaked at this point, seeing as apparation was one of the worst ideas ever, according to Hermione ("Wonderful, just let me splinch myself _now_ and get it over with") but she'd managed, at least, to spell the books to keep them dry on the way.

She pulled his now-dripping robes from her shoulders and threw them toward the couch. It gave her pause, even in her utter, flabbergasted anger at him.

He hadn't said a word. Not the entire way back, he hadn't said a _thing._

Hermione glanced back, suddenly uncertain, to see him leaning against the back of the door in a slight slouch. His dark, dripping hair had tangled over his eyes, and his expression was, for lack of a better description, entirely neutral. It was so neutral, so perfectly so, that she somehow knew he was more upset than she had ever seen him before.

It made her anger dissolve abruptly into a sick knot in her stomach. Whatever he had done, whatever stupidity he had wrought, pitching a fit at him had not relieved the situation. Nor had it made her feel any better, in the long run. The thought of tearing into someone so brutally, so perfectly, and _succeeding _at it made her suddenly very miserable and disappointed in herself.

Of course he knew he'd screwed up. Of course he felt horrible about it. Humiliated, likely, on top of everything else. He'd failed at his only quintessential function – at what he'd been _trained_ to do.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

Silence pressed into the space between them. Her poor, unheeded rug became slightly more wet with each passing moment.

"I..." Hermione floundered awkwardly. "I... know."

If she had been expecting another answer, she didn't get one. Neither did he look up at her.

"...they didn't tell you it was an important course," she muttered, feeling uneasy at his discomfort. "They didn't mention it at all, I'm sure. And... and I probably would have been dead already, you know, if it weren't... if you hadn't been..."

"You needn't try to pat me on the back, Granger. You were right. This is entirely my fault, and there's no excuse." He wiped somewhat awkwardly at the water that had beaded on his face. She had the sudden, incredible impression of him as a thoroughly chastened student. A boy barely keeping up a brave face, terrified inside at the thought of telling his parents that he'd failed a class.

"No, I'm..." She sighed, and crossed her arms uncomfortably. "I should have been more grateful than I was, honestly. And... less difficult, probably."

He managed to crack a very shaky smile, though his eyes still didn't meet hers directly. "If you're going to try making me feel better, the least you could do is come up with something more plausible. We both know I'm the difficult one."

She could have cried in relief. Blaise Zabini was a smug, overbearing, unfortunately witty person. She wasn't used to – to – whatever he'd been a moment ago. Somehow, the former was infinitely preferable to her sensibilities.

Hermione pressed her palms against her arms and nodded. "You're right. You're a bastard, Zabini. Now let me get a fire going so we can both dry off."

It loosened the air a little bit, though not entirely, and she felt a little gratified that things hadn't degenerated irreparably after all. She started the fire normally, as she certainly didn't trust herself to start one magically at the moment, and even eyed the stove dubiously for a moment before setting some water on for tea.

He was wringing his shirt out when she came back into the living area. She tried not to notice.

"Your wards are fairly good," Blaise told her, his voice strangely soft. "They won't fix everything, but you should find it easier while you're at home."

She nodded hesitantly – then made a slight affirmative sound when she remembered that he had a sudden problem with looking anywhere near her, and probably hadn't seen it.

"That's good to hear," she sighed. It was actually such a horrible relief in quick succession that she had to keep herself from sitting down too quickly. "I suppose that means I'll have to work on it in here, though. You couldn't have picked a better way to put me under house arrest."

"It wasn't my intention at all," he said, and she fell silent again at the subdued tone. "But if you explain what you know, I'll endeavor to fix it as soon as possible."

Hermione sat down in front of the fire uneasily, mustering her thoughts. "Give me a moment to think," she said ruefully, "and I'll tell you what I know."

0-0-0-0-0

Blaise Zabini had probably had only one or two worse moments in his entire life. One of them had been the death of his favorite aunt. The other had probably been finding out he needed perfect marks on his Transfiguration midterm in order to get even a chance at passing the class.

He certainly hadn't meant to do anything stupid. Very few people did stupid things on purpose, after all. It had been so _frustrating_ though, in a way that very few things could be to him. It wasn't that he was any sort of genius – actually, this had been proven multiple times – but he'd always had the sheer determination to simply follow through with the things important to him. He had been justly proud of that. He'd never had to ask for help before. Working at it had always been enough, even if it did take a godawful amount of time.

But she'd given her help anyway, _twice_ now, and in such a way that it always made him feel... outclassed. Irrelevant. Whatever else Granger thought, she was definitely among the favored few who had been born with naturally inordinate intelligence. Brighter than every other person in the school, and she _still _expected, incredibly, that everyone could and should keep up with her.

She had nibbled at her lip the entire time she lectured him. What had she been thinking? What impossible standard had she been comparing him to, if not her own?

It made him examine that mental journal of his more carefully now, in front of the fire, a bleak sort of certainty beginning to invade his thoughts. It said nothing on the subject. But if you read between the lines, he realized, one fact became extraordinarily clear.

He was _jealous_ of Hermione Granger.

Had that been why he'd taken this job? Had he come here intentionally wanting to outdo her, perhaps, just once in his life?

If so, he'd failed entirely. Even clawing his way past the Auror academy's exacting standards, even somehow managing to apprentice himself to a world-famous Auror, somehow managing to win his consistent approval, his praise... arguably even just surviving this long in the field. All of this suddenly meant absolutely nothing in comparison to Granger's one dissenting opinion.

Right. And for this, he'd gone and... well, he actually had a fairly good idea what he'd done, as he'd had quite a bit of time to worry about it. The counter-curse he'd tried was probably the least subtle method he had ever utilized, relying on the wizard's brute power to pull curses apart at the seams. But should someone not have enough power – and especially if the curse were particularly well put together – he imagined it would be something like tugging at a square knot. Or trying to pull a noose apart by tightening it against the victim's neck.

Hermione glanced up at the sudden whistling sound of the teapot she'd set on the stove. She gave him a nervous sort of glance before she got up to get it, disappearing into the kitchen.

He'd have been much more comfortable if she'd just been vindictive at him. Even a _little._

"Ah... here. Tea."

She couldn't even be petty when it counted, could she?

He took the cup wordlessly, and tried to grasp the edges of his mind. He was wandering on into useless, self-absorbed thoughts. What he should have been doing was thinking of a way to reverse what he'd done.

"It'll be... sort of like unpicking a very tight knot," Hermione said, after a sip of her tea. It surprised him for a moment that she'd come to the same conclusion. He shouldn't have needed that to validate his his own results, but he had. "I can probably help a little, but..."

She faltered, but he heard her thoughts as clearly as she'd spoken them.

"I can send for Moody if you want." He stared at the tea.

"...no. I mean, you don't have to. I imagine he doesn't... well, something like this, he probably doesn't have the, er..."

"Patience?" His lips curled up. "No, probably not. But I should at least tell him."

Hermione hesitated again. "You don't have to."

"I _should,_" he repeated.

She clenched her hands on her cup a little. "But you really don't have to."

Blaise frowned, and looked up at her. She had very soft, pitying eyes that he didn't like at all.

"I'm sure it'll all work out," she said. "And... if it doesn't, I don't think having him here will change things."

He eyed her for a moment. She was right, though she didn't know it. "Actually... he's trying to chase down the people he thinks are responsible." He set the tea down, and rubbed at his eyes tiredly. Right. She deserved the truth at this point, didn't she? "And I lied. To an extent."

Hermione blinked. "About what?"

Wonderful. He hadn't _ever_ planned to tell her this part.

"I'm not here in an official capacity... I'm technically taking my vacation time right now. Only Moody knows I'm here." To still her inevitable questions, he added, "He thought it would be counterproductive to tell Scrimgeour. He'd have dragged you into Ministry custody for... well, however long he thought he had to." Possibly _years_. And he would have made sure the public knew how well he was caring for Miss Hermione Granger, Order of Merlin First Class.

Hermione stared at him. He tried not to wince. Instead, he took a very long gulp of tea.

"...thank you," she said, oddly.

He glanced over at her in surprise, nearly coughing on his tea. "What?"

"... thank you. I was wondering why he hadn't come trying to drag me off after the Mandrake book. Actually, I... I was wondering why he hadn't sent a whole stupid entourage plus reporters in the first place." Her look had softened at him in a funny way. He wasn't entirely sure how to take it.

"Well, ah..." He coughed a bit. "I think Moody was more worried that a public reaction would... encourage things. Right now, there's probably a comparatively small fraction of people who want you dead." He paused. "People who are also willing to hurry things along, anyway."

Scrimgeour was almost as dangerous to her as the ex-Death Eaters after her head. One of his media frenzies would have her a figure of overwhelming public concern. Then, suddenly, her death would become an obvious winning tactic, instead of a last-ditch effort at recovery.

Hermione looked down at her tea. Because Blaise was looking down from her eyes, and because he had begun to notice things like this about her, he saw that her knuckles were white on the porcelain. A part of him wanted to cheer, to say _aha, you're frightened after all, you have some sense._ Another part of him was suddenly less than enthused about the thoughts that must have been going through her head.

"I am... going to keep you safe. As best I can." It was a hard thing to say, which made his saying it all the more strange. Because he wasn't entirely sure why it was so important that he tell her.

"Why?" she said, still staring at her tea.

He blinked, caught entirely off guard.

Hermione sighed, her posture slumping just a little. "I don't mean to offend you, Zabini. It's just that you don't even – I mean we barely ever knew each other," she said. "Why go so out of your way for me?"

"I..." Blaise stopped. He knew the answer to this. He knew it in his bones, all the way down to the marrow. But he had never been able to find the right words for it. In all the time he'd spent studying, volunteering to allow older people to humiliate him and beat him to a pulp, going out and risking his life for the kind of money cleaning people would laugh at... and then, at the end of the day, to be berated for every little mistake, which could have cost someone else their life... "It's my job," he said, rather lamely.

"...ah." She nodded, as though she understood. He was fairly sure she didn't, though.

He sighed, and reached over to pick up an Arithmancy book. "You might go have something to eat," he said. "This isn't going to be solved within the hour."

Hermione hesitated, giving him a strange, unreadable sort of glance. When he didn't say anything else, though, she moved back into the kitchen to find something somewhat filling.

Blaise Zabini did not understand Arithmancy at all. But he was very determined to learn it, all the same.

0-0-0-0-0

She didn't understand him. Not at all.

Hermione had been rather hopeful that she could somewhat predict him, until that day. He had been borderline rude in a very polite sort of manner, and he'd taken quite a bit of pride in making her squirm whenever he could. He was annoying, and certain, and he'd displayed a very believable aura of self-assured competence.

But Blaise Zabini had stumbled, as she'd secretly hoped he would, and she had been there to see the entire thing. Instead of satisfying her, it had frightened her, and also made her see some things about herself that she wasn't sure she liked. And instead of turning his mistake around on her, or throwing his hands up, or any number of things, he'd _apologized_ and offered to remedy things. Remarkably, he seemed to absolutely mean it.

She still didn't understand his motivations in the slightest. But she was beginning to maybe _respect_ him, somehow, and (god forbid) even like him a little. The more rational part of her was wondering why she could only stand him after he'd nearly incapacitated her completely, but she really couldn't give it an answer.

Instead, her stomach twisted into a funny kind of knot when she realized that he was still out there, staring at one of her Arithmancy books in that way he sometimes did when he was concentrating very hard on something.

Hermione Granger did not understand Blaise Zabini at all. But she suddenly wanted to, all the same.


	9. Chapter 9

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** All right – for those who don't yet understand, the curse on Hermione is, essentially, a whole lot of horrible luck. Her magic is technically working fine, it's just odds on that anything she does with her magic will go wrong somehow. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Hence apparation being a really bad idea.

Blaise tried to do the equivalent of breaking a knot instead of untying it. Naturally, this doesn't work very often, so all he managed to do was tighten it into one of those frustrating things that you pick at for hours with your nails and finally just cut off entirely. I'm being artful here. It's a spell, not a knot.

Also, my book is officially 80,000 words, and I'm planning on submitting to Baen books when I'm done, as the companies who accept partial submissions have been letting me down some. It's a fantasy, murder mystery-ish, dark romance kind of thing... er... with existential dilemmas. And stuff. If people are actually really interested in it, I might post an excerpt somewhere for you, but I wouldn't like to do that until I'm closer to getting it actually published. You don't want to wait a year on something you're interested in, and I wouldn't want you to either.

Nighthawk is an amazing, unfinished Blaise/Hermione that has just driven me insane. I feel the need to be productive, because of that.

_Nine._

Hermione was trying to cool down and reorient herself before she talked to Blaise again; she was also aware that he had focused himself intently on learning the requisite Arithmancy for the spell, and she didn't want to disturb him from it. Therefore, she grabbed a calming book and sat herself down in the kitchen.

But when she heard him muttering something frustrated to himself, she let herself peek in _just a little._

Crookshanks was sitting on top of his book, eying him... well, like a cat. Blaise was trying to get him to budge, rather unsuccessfully.

"_Gatto fastidioso._" Blaise's eyes narrowed at Crookshanks as the cat merely purred against his hand. "...stop looking at me like that. I don't have time for you." Hermione noticed, however, that he was scratching under Crookshank's chin in that sensitive little place as he said it. She had the impression that her cat was grinning.

_This is not the most adorable thing I have ever seen,_ she told herself firmly. Her chest was fluttering in a funny way, though, and she had the urge to cover a giggle. Hermione did not giggle. It was one of those unspoken rules of the universe. So instead, she found herself envying Crookshanks, as Blaise gave him a reluctantly affectionate look and began to scratch him behind the ears.

_Oh no. That won't do either._ She moved back into the kitchen and sat herself down, and tried to calm the little flutters quickly. Damn hormones. She'd thought herself well rid of them by way of a very gruesome seventh year. As it was looking, that year had merely suppressed them with some very effective, constantly life-threatening danger. _For god's sake!_ Hermione thought at them. _You've picked entirely the wrong time to come back! And HIM? I refuse. Go back where you came from._

Her hormones retreated, slowly and sullenly, but promised to be back later. She 'hmph'd and opened up her book again.

"What are you reading?" Blaise asked, leaning over her shoulder.

Her hormones were back.

"Ah-" Hermione tried not to flush. "It's just- ah-"

"_Wuthering Heights?_ I didn't know you _read _fiction," he said, sounding amused. She tried not to turn red. Normally, she wouldn't have been caught dead reading such a... a... stereotypically female book. But it was _good,_ for goodness' sake!

"I normally don't," Hermione said stiffly. "I'm trying to relax a little." The opposite was happening, with him leaning over her shoulder, trying to read a snatch of the current page. She could feel his heat. She could _smell_ him, for god's sake, and... oh, it was a nice smell. It made her want to lean back and purr, like Crookshanks. Instead, she kept herself ramrod straight in her chair and reset her bookmark. "If you're so keen on reading it," she informed him archly, "I'll lend it to you. But I don't like people reading over my shoulder."

Blaise leaned down over her, and she tried not to catch her breath. His mouth was slightly quirked. "I don't read fiction much either," he said. "But I was going to ask a question about this equation, if you're not busy."

_You're not busy!_ her body screamed at her.

"I'm not busy," Hermione replied, though talking with him at the moment was exactly the opposite of winding herself down.

"Ah. Good." She felt his presence move from behind her, and tried not to sag in relief and disappointment. _I need a hobby, clearly,_ she thought. _Other than getting myself into mortal danger, that is._

"The astronomy in here," he said, turning the book toward her. "I'm afraid it's been a while since I've had to know planetary positions."

Hermione frowned at him, still trying to calm herself. "I'm not a walking encyclopedia, you know. It's been a while since I had to learn them too." Blaise raised an eyebrow at her, his mouth settling into its usual smirk. She sighed, and waved a hand. "Right. You'll want to look at Mercury – it's hard to see until about January, but you should be able to calculate its position from a chart in the back."

"Very gracious of you," he said, though his mouth was still twitching. Hermione sighed, and opened up her book again, trying to escape the real world for just a _little bit._ She noticed at the edges of her perceptions that he still hadn't moved from the table, though – and was, in fact, still reading across from her. _What? _she thought uncomfortably. _Is he staying nearby just in case he needs another hint?_

Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe he enjoyed her company? A little? It was that traitorous little voice in her head that was suddenly taking everything a little too seriously. Hermione mentally hissed at it, and forced herself to read her book.

0-0-0-0-0

The strange atmosphere in the kitchen did not go entirely unnoticed by Blaise Zabini. He was, after all, fairly good at reading people. And if he remembered correctly, Hermione should have been flying through the pages of her book, not lingering over them for minutes. Her posture was somewhat stiffer than usual, too, although this was only a minute difference, and she kept shifting her sitting position with a frown. She could have been nervous about the spell. She could have been nervous about something in the book, or about missing work. Strangely, he was certain that none of these were the case. It occurred to him that she might still be angry with him, but too polite to say anything.

_Now me,_ he thought with an inward sigh. _I'm not focused now. I do wish she'd stop being so jumpy._

He forced his attention back to the equation he'd been working on, and tried not to think of that last possibility. He'd been wrong. He was trying to make up for it. There was little else he could do.

Hermione suddenly put her book down with a frustrated sigh, and moved toward one of the cupboards. He was nearly back on the right track when she brushed past him to get something – and a funny jolt went through him at her slight touch.

_Oh no, _he thought. _No, we're not going in that direction. I've mucked things up enough as it is._

He forced himself to focus on his work again, and mostly succeeded. The rest of the night passed rather smoothly for that, interrupted only when she left a sandwich out for him (strange, but appreciated) and when he had to stop and ask her the occasional question.

Perhaps he wasn't sure what to expect that night, as she headed off to bed. He'd had a somewhat cordial farewell before the whole mess, but he'd probably screwed that bit up rather perfectly. It was something of a surprise, therefore, when Hermione patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and asked him not to stay up _too_ late, please, I'll survive the night.

She headed off to her bedroom, then, and he heard the door close behind her. When he finally did go looking for a bit of sleep, he found the couch neatly made up for him once again.

A few days passed in a hurry after this, strangely anticlimactic. After some time spent working through Arithmancy, Blaise was fairly sure he knew what had gone wrong with their little study session at the library (other than quite a bit of frustration on both sides of the matter). A little silence and a lot of concentration had gone a long way toward advancing his rather basic understanding of the subject matter, and he knew that it had become much easier because Hermione wasn't standing over his shoulder. Or rather, she occasionally did, but it was usually a nervous gesture to indicate that she wanted to see how far he'd gotten and was afraid to ask.

Hermione, it turned out, was very good at fixing little gaps in one's knowledge. Teaching something new, however, was not her forte. It was as he'd expected – she held people too much to her own standards, and became frustrated when they weren't up to them.

He therefore spent most of said days in silent reading, with Hermione moving about restlessly, or reading nearby, or finding something for either of them to nibble on. The silences were occasionally broken by a mild curse from the kitchen, or the thud of something hitting Hermione's shin - which would have been terribly amusing under any other circumstances, but all things considered, he did his best to pretend that he wasn't inclined to laugh. At some point near the end of the third day, though, he had a fleeting warning thought, and he pushed his current reading aside to go into the kitchen.

Aha. Just in time.

"Granger," he said. "I hate to burst your bubble, but using a knife is a truly horrible idea right now."

Hermione paused, hand hovering over the knife block. "...right." Her face pinked some at her own absentmindedness, but he had expected something of the sort. Habits tended to sneak up on you like that.

She picked the apple up off the counter instead, and took a bite from it in full. He noted with some surprise that she'd changed her clothes at some point (when?) and was now sitting in the kitchen in some flannels and a tank top. He came to the conclusion, first, that he had been reading far longer than he'd thought – and second, that he really ought not to have been so affected by her change. It was just about as conservative as she'd ever been before, with the sole exception that he could see something more of her arms now, and that her hair was loose around her shoulders.

"Oh," Hermione said, mistaking his stare. "Ah... here. I've another." She tossed him an apple, and he tried not to laugh. _You're jealous of her,_ he told himself. _That's why you were giving her so much attention._

Actually... no. No, if he were truthful with himself, he'd say that he was quite attracted to her, in addition to being jealous (in truth, they were sometimes sort of similar). But having an attraction and acting on it were two incredibly different things. And in this case, there were a few too many complications for him to go, ah. Act on it.

"Thank you," Blaise said, giving her a nod. He frowned as he caught sight of the time. "It's late."

She shrugged uneasily.

"You don't have to stay up," he told her. "I'll let you know if I need a teacher's help." His lips turned up slightly with the words.

Hermione licked her lips. He pretended not to find it fascinating. "You won't stay up all night either, I hope. I... I'm really not that angry, you know. I can stand this for a bit."

The words relieved him some – she hadn't spoken much, after all, and he hadn't been sure exactly what to think. He kept his face still, though, and shrugged in a way that could possibly indicate agreement. She frowned, but nodded. "All right, then." Pause. "Goodnight." It had a softer sound to it again.

Blaise forced himself to raise his eyes to her again. They traveled up the length of her legs; lingered on the inch of skin between her waistband and tank top for a moment; then thoughtfully on the pulse point of her throat. When he'd finally reached her eyes, she was slightly pink. "Goodnight," he echoed, and found himself chagrined at the slightly suggestive tone he'd given the word.

She blinked, somewhere in the middle of tugging at a strand of her hair. After a moment, probably assuming she'd heard something wrong, she turned to head back for her room.

_Bad idea,_ he reminded himself, though without too much strength behind it. _Very bad idea._

Blaise turned back for his current page, and took an absent bite of his apple.

0-0-0-0-0

Hermione stared down at the piece of parchment on her desk.

_Dear Harry,_ it said.

_I happen to be writing to you about something rather different, and the only reason I'm doing so is because I absolutely _trust _you not to laugh about it, or show it to Ron, who would almost certainly overreact and kill someone. I do hope you understand what I'm saying, Harry, because what I'm saying is that I need advice very badly, and if you ever tell anyone about it, I will deny it until my dying breath, and I will make you regret it._

_That said-_

She scribbled the entire thing out with her quill.

Then, tugging at a strand of hair somewhat desperately, she grabbed another sheet of parchment and started again.

_Dear Ginny,_ it said.

_I have a very big problem of the sort you're good at – or at least better at than me – and your advice would be incredibly appreciated. Only, please don't tell Ron, and please don't tell Harry, even though I know the two of you are terribly close-_

And have the same mail address, she remembered.

Hermione scratched this letter out very thoroughly as well.

She stared at her desk for a few moments, remembering the way she'd seen him looking at her – that very concentrated look, the one that commanded his whole attention – and the little smirk that she had suddenly found somewhat attractive. And, embarrassingly, the single word he'd murmured to her that may or may not have indicated an interest in – in-

_Dear Tonks,_ she wrote, almost desperately.

_There is a very attractive man in my house right now, and I'm not sure what to do with him or even whether anything could be done at all, considering that my mind could very well be playing horrible HORRIBLE tricks on me. And I am under effective house arrest with him, which brings up all sorts of scenarios that I maybe shouldn't be contemplating, and for goodness' sake, I can't talk to you EITHER because you're not supposed to know he's here!_

She slammed down the quill with a frustrated sound – then gritted her teeth as one of her fingers made protest of a sliver. The desk was new, and perfectly smooth, but this sort of thing entirely failed to surprise her at the moment.

Hermione pressed her head into her hands, and tried to think of a single, solitary person that she could ask for advice, or at least beg to listen.

It took her nearly a full quarter of an hour. And even still, she wrote it in a very uncertain hand.

_Dear Parvati..._

0-0-0-0-0

Blaise woke, sometime when the sun was brighter than it should have been; shortly, he became aware of two things.

Firstly: that there was an owl at the window, and that it was tapping its beak on the window with an almost insane urgency.

Secondly: that the reason he was finding it difficult to get up was that a very large cat was sleeping on his chest. Crookshanks let out a low, lazy _mrowl_ of a sound as he stretched over the unfortunate wizard. Blaise coughed some, and tried to push the cat off a bit. Crookshanks didn't budge. Damn kneazles.

"Oh!" Hermione's steps flew through the hall. "I'll get it! Don't get up!"

Blaise sighed, and thudded his head back into the book he'd been using as a pillow. Then, with a last, heroic push, Crookshanks rolled off of him; he got to his feet and headed for the window.

"What? I said I'd get it, Zabini, would you _mind-_" He blinked as she very literally grabbed his arm to stop him, and started struggling with the latch to the window.

"You seem fairly excited about your..." He narrowed his sleep-blurred eyes a bit. "...Witch Weekly."

Hermione blinked. Slowly, she released his arm. "...oh. Er."

"You're even more articulate in the morning than I am," he said smoothly, reaching out to grab the magazine from the owl. He hadn't taken her for the type to read it, but then, there were some things that seemed to affect all girls, regardless.

Hermione rubbed at her right hand, as she took the magazine from him. "...right. I..." She shook her head. "Never mind." She was very close to him, at the moment, and her hair was rather distinctly muffed from sleep. Her face was flushed and warm, and her breath was sharp from her sudden run. It made him think of something entirely different at this time of day, and he contemplated, just for a moment, the fact that it would take only about an inch to press his lips to the hollow just below her ear. From there, it would be very easy to whisper something suggestive, and if she happened to agree, well... a morning well-spent, yes?

No. For god's sake, no. Even if she _was _shifting back against him a little bit. That probably meant she was trying to duck under his arm... like so. She headed for the kitchen more slowly than before, holding the magazine as though it were a piece of particularly disgusting trash. His eyes lingered on her back, for a second, and he tried to remind himself exactly why he was here. Blaise closed the window again, and glanced down at the slightly folded page of the book he'd slept on. He sighed. She'd probably kill him for that or something. He was exhausted enough that he probably wouldn't care. Not that he would necessarily _mind_ her pouncing on him, but- Arithmancy. Arithmancy was the driest thing on earth. A little of that, and he'd be thinking somewhat coherently again. Blaise picked up the book.

He was just rereading the line he'd left off on for about the tenth time when a little gasp came from the kitchen. _Oh no,_ he thought, in spite of himself, _what's she done now?_

He pushed through the door, feeling rather dead to the morning and entirely not up to this – but Hermione did not look particularly injured. In fact, she had the most hilarious expression on her face, as she stared at a little note that had been included with the magazine.

"That- that- is the _worst_ advice I have _ever_ heard!" Her face was red.

"Oh?" He raised his eyebrows and moved to look. Let none ever say Blaise Zabini was anything less than a first class voyeur of other peoples' embarrassments.

"Don't you _dare!_" Hermione said, jerking the magazine away from him. "I am _burning_ this. Effective immediately." She tugged out her wand – his eyes widened, and he only barely managed to clamp a hand over her mouth.

There was an awkward pause.

He realized belatedly that he had somehow managed to trap her between the counter and himself. Her eyes were blinking furiously in surprise. Her breaths were quick on his hand, but he had a feeling that was more from fury and embarrassment than anything else.

"Zabini," she said, in a muffled voice. "You can let go."

Ah. Yes. Well.

He slowly pulled back, resisting the urge to clear his throat.

Hermione slowly straightened her top. She set the magazine on the counter behind her, and did not look at it.

"Thank you," she said, in a prim tone, "for keeping me from burning my house down. But." She frowned, and looked up at him.

She continued looking at him. The word hung suspended in the air, the sentence dropped.

"But?" Blaise said questioningly, feeling suddenly daring.

"...nothing." Hermione grabbed the magazine again, and moved for the living area. He heard the slow tearing of paper as she went. It took an active force of will not to remember where she'd put the pieces. _Arithmancy,_ he reminded himself. _Not spying. No matter how incredibly curious I am._

And nothing else, yes? Yes.

...well. Unless she were _interested._ That, of course, would be an entirely different matter, wouldn't it?

He tried not to let this turn of thought take over his mind. Because as soon as he accepted that little condition, he'd be thinking of ways to _make_ her interested, instead of ways to un-curse her. One was more enjoyable than the other, certainly, but also much less productive.

_Oh screw it, _he thought. _I'm on vacation. I'll do both._

Thus satisfied, he went back to the charts and numbers and promised himself a little work toward his recreation of choice later in the day.


	10. Chapter 10

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** I wasn't expecting to be quite so busy over the summer, but I picked up a job at a local coffee shop, and the sudden lack of workers at strange times has had me doing lots of shifts. I'm not complaining – it's a wonderful place, with amazing coffee – but it's left me bone tired and barely able to write. I'm back on regular schedule now, though, so – please, enjoy. And don't get _too_ many wrong ideas... yet...

_Ten._

Parvati had been so _exceedingly _unhelpful.

"_We're so proud of you, Hermione!"_ (She was still worrying over who the other one in 'we' was). "_All you really need to do is kiss him, of course, but that's supposed to be _their _prerogative after all, and you shouldn't settle for less. So just follow a bit of advice, and make sure you get to be on top at least once – most guys like that."_

Hermione was beginning to regret her tendency to perfectly remember everything she read, for the first time in her life. Some of the instructions had been so... er... _graphic. _There had even been page number references to the Witch Weekly ("Ten Ways to Please Your Wizard! Guys Tell All!").

Thank god she'd gotten rid of it. Really, she was just hoping she'd never see Parvati again, and that she might be able to keep looking Zabini in the face. Whatever she'd been thinking (and it had _not_ been what Parvati had _thought _she was thinking!) she was now just relieved she hadn't done anything stupid during her temporary fit of madness. _Clearly_, someone like- like _him_- was not going to be interested in someone like _her._ No, that wasn't the point! The point was... was that she wasn't interested either. It had been something about the adrenaline, probably, and nearly getting killed a few times, and maybe just a bit to do with the fact that he was probably very well toned beneath his robes.

_That's not all_, she thought, somewhat miserably. Because he was also very _intense_ when he focused on something, in a way she hadn't ever seen before. And being the object of that focus... was... admittedly a very appealing thought.

And he liked cats. How could she _resist?_

"I'm not interested," Hermione muttered to herself, trying to keep it quiet, as she knew he was still in the kitchen.

"He's not interested either," she said quietly. "So it's really a moot point."

0-0-0-0-0

He had finished the first four books. He understood them all, quite perfectly, and was confident that he could survive a test, should someone be in a teacher-like mood.

This called for some celebration.

Hermione jumped with a gasp, as he leaned his weight onto the back of her chair – he made sure that his fingers were brushing her shoulders very _slightly_, where her tank top failed to cover them. "Hermione," he said pleasantly, keeping his voice low and smooth. "Do you have anything stronger to drink? I thought I would ask, if it's not _too_ much of a bother."

Her skin was soft, where the pads of his fingers touched. It was intriguing. It made him want to press them into her shoulders more, but he restrained himself politely.

"I-" Her voice was high, for a moment, but he wasn't sure whether it was merely from surprise. "I try not to drink... ah..."

Blaise shook his head. "Pity. Perhaps I can have someone bring some by." He smiled behind her, and dropped his mouth just a little bit closer to her ear. "Did you want anything yourself?"

He saw her shiver. Yes, he definitely saw her shiver. And it wasn't all _that_ cold in this house.

"N-no, I think I'll be fine," Hermione replied. He saw her grab one arm nervously, but she'd unconsciously tilted her neck slightly to the side, to give him better access. Should he want to do something. And he couldn't really deny that he did.

Still, delay brought some amount of satisfaction, didn't it?

Blaise pulled back, and he saw her nearly press a hand to her neck. "I'll be in the living room, then," he said, as though nothing had happened.

_End of the night,_ he thought, with a strange anticipation. _I think I may propose a different sleeping arrangement._

In the mean time, he pulled his wand, and flicked through a simple charm. "Binky," he said to the air. "I need something alcoholic. You know where I am..."

0-0-0-0-0

And thus, events began to head toward a very _inevitable_ path, which seemed to be a direct road toward a rather interesting resolution of the subplot. That is, until situational irony hit, and someone, somewhere, said:

"You sent _who?_"

0-0-0-0-0

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.

Hermione tried not to twitch. Her nerves had suddenly set themselves on fire. Her shoulders still burned where he'd touched her so unconsciously, and Parvati be _hanged_, she'd felt the incredibly momentary urge to turn around and kiss him when he'd started saying things in her ear.

"_Did you want anything yourself?"_

Yes. Lots of things. Embarrassingly, many things that had to do with that note she'd been sent.

Hermione moaned, very quietly, and threw her face in her hands. This was turning out to be one of the most singularly humiliating experiences of her life, and it was certainly not helping that she'd never had _experience _in the area before. _What am I supposed to do if I _am _interested?_ It was nearly a mental wail, and it made her feel exceedingly stupid. There was nowhere to research this – well nowhere _good,_ anyway, because she'd read those silly self-help dating books, and they were utterly _useless_ – not that she'd ever want to date, remember, but it had seemed good to prepare, just in case-

_Oh look at me,_ she thought. _I'm a nervous wreck because someone... someone _touched _me..._

Did it have to sound so, er, _improper_, in her head?

She needed to calm down, more than ever. It wouldn't do to have him come in and see her like this, certainly. There'd be questions asked, then, along the lines of 'why do you look like your puppy died' – or cat, in this instance – and there'd really be no good answer to those questions.

What she really needed was a good long walk outside, but this was a very stupid idea. For all she knew, an escaped zoo animal would attack her, or a power line would break and electrocute her, or a piano would fall out of a window and smash her. Couldn't they have picked a less ridiculous curse, whoever they were?

The phone was ringing.

Hermione blinked.

"What on earth is that _noise?_" Blaise's voice demanded. He sounded somewhere between surprised and pained, and she supposed it would be a rather annoying sound if you hadn't heard it before...

But it was ringing! It barely did that anymore, and not only because very few of her friends knew how to use a phone. Her wards had a way of shorting out the phone most of the time. She'd once researched the idea, thinking she might find a way to negate the interference pattern, but any spell she might use to that effect would naturally have a pattern of its own-

Blaise pushed into the kitchen, coming to stare at the telephone. "How do you turn this off?" he asked.

Right. She ought to answer.

"Never mind," she told him, picking it up off the cradle and shooing him away absentmindedly. "Hello?" she said into the receiver.

"_Hermione! Dear!"_ There was a pause on the line. _"Your phone is working again."_

She sighed. "Yes, mother. Half the scholars would tell you it has something to do with the lunar patterns."

Blaise leaned forward with interest, as though examining the phone. She felt his heat soak into her left side – he was a few inches away, still, but he seemed to radiate it in an almost unhealthy way. _Bad Hermione. Don't lean into him like that. _She stopped herself before they could touch, and gave him a silent, raised eyebrow that was supposed to say 'you're in my personal space, Mr. Zabini'.

He blinked, apparently unable to read eyebrows – then turned his attention back to the phone, and tapped at the backside of the its receiver curiously.

"_Hermione? Is your phone going out again? Can you hear me?"_

She turned her attention back to the phone quickly, remembering that she was in a conversation. "Oh! Yes, I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"_I said, your father and I have missed you, and is there any way you might be able to come to dinner some night this week?"_

Hermione bit at her lip. "I... um... well, about that..." Had his arm just brushed her back? Why did he have to lean in like that? Why did he have to smell so _damned good?_

"_Dear, I know you love your research, but don't you think shutting yourself away is a bit much-"_

"N-no!" she nearly squeaked, as Blaise reached to take the phone from her, apparently not much understanding that she was in the middle of a _conversation._ "No, I mean... I'm sorry, it's not that, it's just that now isn't the best time. You see, I'm... ah... well, it's to do with some magic, and I can't really leave the house right now..."

His hand curled around hers – all calluses and heat and _had his thumb just rubbed over her palm?_ She nearly dropped the phone. Apparently he'd been waiting for this, as he caught it smoothly, bringing it up to his ear in a perfect imitation of the way she'd held it herself.

"Hello?" he asked, sounding vaguely puzzled and somewhat amused.

Hermione resisted the urge to press her face into her hands. She couldn't imagine what her mother might be thinking. She knew Harry and Ron's voices, after a fashion, and neither of them had that slight trace of Italian in their English...

"Oh. Yes. I'm Auror Zabini... Blaise Zabini..." His mouth turned up. "I'm currently taking care of Hermione. She had a nasty run-in with a curse, but she should be fine by Friday..." All in all, he looked rather bemused by the voice coming out of the phone. "Yes, I'll certainly tell her. Er... no, I'm not, ah..." She saw his face change to an odd expression, and her stomach plummeted in fear. "No- well- that is-" Her mother's voice rose in sudden volume over the phone, but it was a sound of delight rather than anger. "I see. Yes, I'll tell her, but I'm not so sure that that would be a-" He stopped, blinking, and pulled the phone away from his ear. "Hello?"

Hermione snatched it from him, her face burning. It had returned to a stuttering dial tone. "What on earth were you _thinking?_" she snapped at him, still trying to ignore the sudden shivers that came whenever he got near her.

"I... well, I wanted to try it out, honestly..." He looked almost sheepish. "But, ah... I don't wish to be rude... is she _always_ like that?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Like _what?_"

"Like..." He struggled for words, seeming at a loss. "..._that. _Never mind. Hermione, I believe you're going to dinner at your parents' on Friday night." He looked uncharacteristically nervous, though, and she groaned, rubbing at her forehead.

"What else?" Hermione asked him.

"Ah. Well." Blaise paused. "Nothing. I probably misheard." Before she could insist, though, he pressed on: "I've started laying out the equation for the counter-curse. I thought you might want to look over it for mistakes."

If he'd been hoping to derail her from whatever her mother had said to him – well, he'd succeeded. She felt her eyes widen. "Already?" she said.

Blaise shrugged. "Only part of it is Arithmancy. Besides, you shouldn't get too excited - it's still going to take some time to accommodate for all the variables. I'll probably need your help with that later."

Hermione let out a sigh of relief as he grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her gently out of the kitchen. "Oh thank goodness," she said. "I had thought- well, I'd imagined it would take some time, considering-"

"I'm not that slow," she thought she heard him mutter. He let her wrist go to move toward a few pieces of scrap parchment on the table, and her face flushed in embarrassment.

"I've never seen anyone try to learn an entirely new subject all at once before, is what I meant to say," she tried to correct herself, but she was somehow sure she'd already done the damage. _Blast it,_ she thought. _He's so touchy sometimes..._

If he was still sore over it, though, he gave no indication as he handed the first diagram to her. She frowned, and looked it over slowly, hoping she wouldn't find any mistakes. She'd once taken more than a little pleasure in showing her abilities by correcting other peoples' homework, but this was a much different situation, and he was a much different person than many of her friends had been. Hermione had more than once gotten the feeling that he took her criticism more personally than normal, though she'd no idea why this might be.

Thankfully, Zabini had really done his research, and the diagram seemed correct. "Everything seems in order," she told him, handing it back. "Of course, you realize I'm very likely to make mistakes right now, so..."

"I'll take it into consideration," Blaise replied, setting the diagram aside and nearly collapsing into the nearest chair. She blinked as he let his head fall back and began to rub at his eyes. "I'm currently very sick of numbers and stars," he told her. "From your reaction, I take it I'm ahead of schedule - so I plan to eat something good, have a strong drink, and do something amusing tonight."

She was about to protest this suddenly lackadaisical attitude – they were so _close! _- but he opened his eyes and looked at her, and her breath caught in her throat. There was a strangely predatory look in them that she couldn't quite bring herself to object to. "Care to join me?" he asked.

Hermione swallowed.

"Er?" she said intelligently.

His mouth turned up slowly, his expression just a little sleepy but still slightly suggestive. "I said," he repeated, "would you like to do something amusing with me tonight?"

For once, even her thoughts ceased to be verbose.

"Oh," he said, still staring at her a little hungrily. "Good."


	11. Chapter 11

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N: **Yes, I'm not really all _that_ cruel. Here it is. Enjoy. It may be a while before the next one, or it may not.

_Eleven._

"Alveus," Hermione said, "is not a word. Well, not one you can _use_, anyway."

Blaise frowned at her. "It is very much a word," he replied, "and you know it." He crossed out his score and added an exorbitant number to it, which brought him about fifty points higher than her own score. "Also, that's a double word score."

She frowned back. "I meant that it's Latin, and the rules explicitly say that you can't use foreign words because the letters are weighted for _English._" She grabbed for the score pad, to scribble him back down to his prior score, but he lifted it up out of her way.

"You made that up," Blaise accused her. He paused. "Also, you're slurring."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, but her hand had already been going for the wineglass next to her. "Am... am not." It wasn't her fault it was a really good vintage. Or something. She'd never much had any sort of alcohol before, but whatever he'd gotten his house elf to bring over, it was _addictive._

And she was _not_ slurring.

"Your turn," he said. The pad was next to his knee, across the board from her. She wouldn't be able to get at it quickly enough, by any means.

Hermione sighed, and shook her head. "Fine. _Fine._" She scanned the board, then smiled triumphantly. "Fine," she said again, and snatched a few letters from her pile. Her hands were only weaving a teeny bit as she set them down on one side of his word. "Laetitia. That's..." She squinted a little. "Eight. Plus a triple letter score – ten. Plus, I used all my letters. That's an extra fifty."

He stared at her. Then down at her wine. Then back at the board.

"How can you still be playing like this after _three glasses?_" he asked her. "It's not fair."

Hermione took another long sip, and gave him a prim look. "I happen to pride myself on my loquacity and articulation, at all times and in all states of... of..." She frowned. "...cognizance."

Blaise shook his head incredulously. "Do you realize," he demanded, "that you are using longer and longer words, the more you drink?"

"I'm sure there's a simpler word for that," she muttered to herself, not quite listening to him. "Sensibility, perhaps..."

"I refuse to play Scrabble with a drunk who can't speak in less than three syllables," he told her.

"I!" Hermione paused, and looked down at her wineglass again. Her brow knit. Hadn't this been full a moment ago? "I am not drunk," she said finally. "I am... very slightly inebriated, perhaps, but I dislike your assertions that I might- might be- a dipsomaniac." She leaned in toward him, and nearly lost her balance over the game board. "Because I'm _not._"

Blaise looked down at her, blinking. She smiled. His eyes were really very pretty – or, no, it was more his eyelashes. They were longer than usual, and they made his eyes look more startling than they might otherwise be. Funny, that she'd never taken the time to examine him, to figure that out-

Oh. Right, because that would mean she was staring.

"I'm not staring," she declared to him, just to clear that part up.

"Oh," he said, looking back at her. "All right then."

His lips were very delicious-looking as well, in some way. She couldn't quite put her finger on why. He would probably taste a little like wine if she kissed him now, and that wasn't necessarily such a bad thought. In fact, it sounded very appetizing indeed.

"Hang me," Hermione said, blinking again. "I think Parvati was right for once." She had, at some point, leaned in so far that she could feel his heat again. And when she pressed forward through those few extra inches, finally, it was just as satisfying as she'd imagined it would be. It put her a little too much off balance, but that was hardly a problem now – she felt him catch her in surprise, his arm around her waist, his hand slightly askew on her hip-

Her lips missed a few inches, but this wasn't _too_ bad. His skin had its own taste, and his neck was much softer than the callused thumb that had caught at the skin of her side. She forgot the wine, caught up in an entirely different addiction and fascination. His breath hissed in, shocked, when she nibbled at the spot a little bit. _I wonder if he'd mind if I ate him a little,_ she thought irrationally, and a little laugh bubbled up out of her.

"You got me _drunk_," she laughed against his neck. For some reason, this was suddenly _hilarious._

His hand tightened on her hip in a very nice way, then, and she felt him press her back onto the board. A few pieces scattered, but others were still pressing themselves into her hands. His other hand grasped the back of her neck, tilting it up so that his mouth could descend on her pulse point. She gasped, her laughter dissipating into a giddy surge of heat.

Things very well may have degenerated at that point. In fact, she really _really _wanted them to, as she attested by sliding hands up his back and tugging him further forward. But there was a sound at the edge of her senses, something familiarly annoying. The door. Someone was knocking there.

She could feel Blaise's breath against her neck, his weight pressed against her, his thumb brushing over her hipbone...

Someone was going to _die._

"I don't want to get that," she said dimly.

"What a coincidence," he growled, his teeth nibbling at her neck. "I don't want you to either."

Well. That certainly decided things, now, didn't it?

Blaise brushed those admirable lips over the underside of her jaw, and things began to proceed exactly as they should have. She'd just dared to tangle a hand in his hair (curlier than hers, which was funny, because she'd never met _anyone_ with hair curlier than hers), which elicited a very promising groan from him – but then, the voices started.

"Hermione! You'd better open up now, Hermione, or I swear to god-"

"Ron, would you shut up?" Then: "Hermione! If you don't open up, I'll blow down the door!"

Correction: _two_ people were going to die.

"Damn," Blaise muttered against her skin. "And I promised to be nice to the Boy Wonder from now on." He pushed himself up a little waveringly, and she had to stop herself from tugging him down again. Immediately, she missed his heat.

"That's all right," Hermione said, feeling a little muzzy. "_I_ didn't."

Hermione had probably somewhat underestimated her state of cognizance. She found herself stumbling a little as she headed for the door. She was fairly sure that the flush on her face was due to more than alcohol, though.

"What have I told you about threatening my house?" Hermione demanded, drawing her wand and yanking open the door.

Ron, his hair as red as ever, and his head thick as ever, seemed to actually flinch back from her for a second. Harry didn't even bother putting up a brave front. He jumped back in shock.

She wavered, then, and gave a teeny little hiccup.

That made them both straighten immediately.

"Hermione," Ron demanded. "Are you _drunk?_"

"Look who's talking!" she said immediately. That didn't make any sort of immediate sense, though, so she clarified. "You're the only person who's ever gotten me to drink anything alcoholic, and as I _recall_, you had me bringing _you _aspirin while _I _was nearly dying myself-"

"You _are_ drunk!" Harry said incredulously. His eyes focused on something behind her, then, and his expression went dark. "Auror Zabini," he said. "What a surprise."

Blaise stumbled into Hermione just a little as he came up behind her. She envied the fact that it was a graceful stumble, that he could _still_ manage to outdo her, even drunk. "We were playing Scrabble," he said, his arm draped around her shoulders. She could imagine the lopsided grin on his face.

"Is _that _what you call it?" Ron asked, and Hermione glared at him in spite of the fact that he was really spot on for once.

She straightened her shoulders, but didn't duck out from Blaise's grasp. "I won, in fact," she said primly.

"You did not!" Blaise accused immediately. "You can't use Latin words in Scrabble, remember?"

"Look who's talking, Mr. _Alveus-double-word-score!_"

She became aware that Harry was staring at her, and that Ron wasn't too far behind him. His dark face suddenly turned helpless, and he broke into laughter.

"Hermione," Ron said. "Oh. Oh my god."

She and Blaise probably shot them identical glares. In fact, she felt his arm tighten around her shoulders, and she wondered whether he was remembering just how wonderfully close they'd been a few minutes ago.

"Here we figured- and _you're _a bad influence on _him!_" Ron laughed.

Harry wiped at his eyes, behind his glasses. "Be careful, Zabini. She'll have you studying something before long."

Blaise's fingers brushed over the back of her neck in a wicked way, and Hermione felt her breath catch. "Oh yes," he said, his mouth curling up. "I'm learning Arithmancy."

Ron guffawed further, apparently missing the accompanying gesture.

"Well, it was terribly nice and decorous of the two of you to make this social visit at... what, eleven at night?" Hermione said, her eyes narrowing. "And I'm sure you were both very... well-intentioned... but I'm quite ready for you to leave now."

Harry shook his head. "Actually..." He glanced at Ron. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist. Or _we_ are. Moody is taking this seriously, which means that you can't just blow us off like before." His eyes settled on the slightly inebriated Zabini. "Besides, your bodyguard is drunk."

"But quite capable," Zabini replied, and Hermione blinked as he tapped her cheek with his wand. He had apparently been holding it up his sleeve as he came up behind her. "You'd be dead if you were a Death Eater."

"A Death Eater wouldn't knock," Harry fired back, and she groaned. This was _not _going to turn into a 'who's the better dark wizard killer' conversation, was it? (They came up much more often than one would think).

"I set up wards," Zabini said immediately. "By all means, let me know if you can get through them, especially without alerting me. I'll just wait inside until you dazzle me with your cat burglar act, shall I?"

Yes. It was going to be one of _those _conversations.

"I could get through any wards you put up," Ron interrupted, his eyes narrowed. "Harry could just wipe the floor with you."

"I'd like to see that-" Blaise started coldly, but Hermione ducked his arm with an exasperated growl and pushed him outside.

"Go ahead," she said shortly. "All three of you. Fight it out for all I care. But as it turns out," her eyes narrowed here. "I don't need _any_ of you to hold my hand. Concern noted. Now _go home._"

She slammed the door in front of them. The lock and the wards closed, only a moment later.

_I'd nearly forgotten why I hate boys, _she thought darkly, as she headed toward her room.


	12. Chapter 12

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** As my first fantasy novel is already finished and going through that whole submission process, I decided I'd take a new angle at writing and go for a supernatural romance. I hear those are popular these days, you see, but I haven't been able to find an actual _good_ one (no, I promise you Laurell K. Hamilton does _not_ count), so I'm going to be arrogant enough to give it a try myself. It, er. Probably shows somewhat in this chapter. I sort of consider fanfiction as my warm-up, after all.

_Twelve._

Blaise was frustrated.

In more ways than one, really. But mostly because he was standing outside in what was promising to be a somewhat wet night, staring at the locked door of a very attractive, very willing woman. To add insult to injury, he'd personally warded the house. He knew there was no way in hell he'd be getting inside unless he spent the entire night taking them apart from the outside. At which point, presumably, she would come to her senses and let him back in _anyway._

"Very smooth, Zabini."

Also, he was sharing this porch with the two of _them._

"But why are _we _locked outside?" Harry was grumbling.

Idiots. _Idiot._ He wasn't supposed to be calling Potter names.

"To make an educated guess," Blaise drawled, "Hermione was just drunk enough to be offended that you came to babysit her. Imagine that."

"_You're_ babysitting her," Ron shot back darkly. "_We _came to lend a friendly hand. Because we're her _friends_."

"No," Blaise said. "You came to babysit her." He ignored the comment on his own job because it was really the truth, and because he was just muddled enough that he couldn't come up with a way to twist it around.

"And what did _you_ come to do?" Harry demanded. "Play Scrabble?"

Mm. Scrabble. Scrabble with Hermione on top, nibbling at his neck-

"OW!"

Blaise blinked, then scowled, already feeling more frustrated. Potter had just tried to disarm one of the wards on the door, and gotten a good shock for his trouble.

"They're not passive wards," Blaise said, his voice warring between exasperation and pride. "They're not going to just sit there while you try to take them apart."

Ron was walking past him, rolling up his sleeves as he headed to join Harry. "We can try inversion," he said to Harry speculatively. "At least on the first of these layers..."

There was a murmured agreement from Harry, whereupon Blaise decided they deserved to be turned pink for their efforts. Naturally, he wouldn't have overlooked anything so simple as inversion.

"What?" Ron snapped, as he saw Blaise turning around. "You're not going to help?"

"I thought you could get through my wards, Weasel?" He seemed to recall that Malfoy had once called Ron that once. "Besides, why should I want to undo all my hard work?"

"Leave him," Harry grunted, rolling up his own sleeves and giving his wand a few test flicks. "We can do this."

"Best of luck," Blaise murmured insincerely. He turned on his heel and began to stalk around the side of the house, in search of a decent tree to climb.

0-0-0-0-0

Hermione was not drunk. Or – at least, not totally drunk, which was something. In point of fact, she'd drunk a few small glasses of water since the Blaise Incident (as she'd taken to calling it), so that her exasperated mutterings were now back down to one and two syllable words, with only the occasional three interspersed between them.

Of course, sobering up somewhat had the unintended consequences of – well, bringing her back to considering consequences.

Hermione frowned as she closed her bedroom door behind her, and began rummaging for some pajamas.

She couldn't really have thrown herself at him like that? Could she have? She seemed to remember him looking down at her with a funny sort of expression, and then somewhere in there she'd gotten around to licking at his neck-

Oh dear. That _did_ mean she'd thrown herself at him. And even if his skin _had _tasted rather good, it was a mortifying thought. Then again, he'd responded rather well- then again, he _was _a man, and she _had_ been seeming to offer. What did he think of her now? How was she supposed to act around him? How was she supposed to do anything other than stare at his lips, or possibly at his neck-

Good god, if she ever saw the man again, she'd have to Obliviate him - possibly herself as well.

_Knock knock._

Hermione jumped with a yelp, shooting a panicked glance toward the window. She'd been _dressing!_ Surely no one had- no, the curtains were closed, thank goodness. She contemplated leaving them that way for a moment (more than a moment, really), but another few firm, polite knocks told her that whoever it was, they weren't going to go away. She reached out to pull aside the curtain, fixing on her best irritated expression.

What she saw probably should not have surprised her – but it did. She blinked, losing her irritation to genuinely unexpected circumstances.

Blaise was leaning against the side of the window; he was carelessly balanced on the large limb of an oak tree, one leg swinging down between the tree and the house. He had a mild expression on his face, but his eyes were amused.

Hermione forced her scowl back on. "If you think I'm going to open this window," she began – but she paused, and frowned. "I don't have an oak tree," she said, puzzled.

Blaise tapped his wand idly against the window. "I had to find an acorn," she heard him say.

She blinked. He grinned his most devastating grin. She was vaguely annoyed to find that it was working on her.

"I'm not letting you in," Hermione declared again, trying to make her voice sound more certain than she felt.

"Of course not," he shrugged. "The window's too small, anyway."

She narrowed her eyes dubiously. "So you just came up here to sit by the window because it was a nice night?"

"Hardly," he replied. "I came up here to check the wards. And to bother you."

His smile was sly, now, his tone lightly teasing. It sent a funny little bolt directly to her stomach, which she tried once again to ignore. "You've done both now, I imagine," Hermione said in a clipped voice. "Good evening." She closed the curtains on him abruptly, not quite sure of the outcome she was trying to achieve, or even really _why_. Was she trying to make him angry? Alienate him? Make up for her total lack of judgment earlier by giving him the cold shoulder? Yes, that last seemed about right.

But she was still staring at the window, with its closed curtains.

Was he still out there? How long did he plan to stay there? What on earth had given him the idea of growing his own personal oak tree in her back yard?

Hermione told herself that she didn't care about the answer to any of these questions. She stomped back to her bed in a huff, and yanked back the covers. For just a moment, she wondered what it might be like to have someone else waiting there, someone to keep her place warm, someone's arms to curl up into. She pushed these thoughts away with an embarrassed flush, and threw herself under the covers, pulling them all the way up to her chin.

She was going to get a very good night's sleep, she vowed. She was _not_ going to think about what might have happened, had Harry and Ron not shown up at her door in the middle of the night. She _certainly _was not going to think about the fact that Blaise was probably _still_ outside her window.

"Blast all men," she muttered, turning onto her side so that she wouldn't face the curtains.

This did not put things quite so far out of mind as she might have wanted them. In fact, Hermione found herself entirely unable to sleep – this due to the simple fact that she could _feel_ him on the other side of her window.

She curled her body up slowly into a ball, and tried to force herself to unconsciousness through sheer force of will. When she opened the door tomorrow, she would be perfectly well-rested and chipper, and she was going to lord it over all three of them. And she was _not_ going to forgive Zabini just because his smile gave her stomach butterflies.

Hermione's eyes snapped open.

Was he _whistling?_

Yes. Yes he was. It was just a low murmur of a sound, barely audible over the natural wind. In fact, if it hadn't been perfectly in tune, that's exactly what she would have thought it was.

Hermione shut her eyes tightly, and tried to ignore it. It was very soft, after all, she could pretend it really was just the wind. Well, if it hadn't been for the fact that it was clearly a certain tune. She wasn't sure which one, which had begun to bother her somewhat. It sounded _vaguely_ familiar, after all, and she was sure she'd know the title if only someone _told_ her what it was.

She let out a frustrated breath, and pushed off the covers. He was doing this on purpose. He'd said he'd come up there to bother her, after all.

"You!" she said, pulling open the curtains.

Blaise looked over from his tree branch innocently. A little black curl had fallen over into his eyes in a way that made her heart jump with some sickeningly female emotion.

"Yes?" he asked, and Hermione realized she'd caught her breath.

"...stop whistling," she said shortly, feeling angry with herself. And him. She couldn't forget that she was irritated with _him._

"Certainly," he agreed easily. "I wasn't aware I was disturbing you."

This was a lie, she thought, but the way his mouth curved upward while he spoke nearly made up for it. Nearly.

"Good," Hermione said, and she closed the curtains again shortly. She was expecting some sort of further annoyance, of course, so that she didn't go too far from the window this time. Instead, she was fully prepared to rip the curtains open and upbraid him further for whatever he was planning to do next.

She stood there for a few seconds, tapping her foot and staring at the curtains. Waiting, mentally counting the seconds in her head.

Time passed. Quite a bit of time, actually. Enough that she eventually forgot to keep counting it.

It was with an odd bit of disappointment that she finally turned to pad back to her bed. Because really, she'd expected worse of him. And – what? Was she not worth bothering now? He'd nibble at her neck, but he wouldn't take the time to properly annoy her? Hermione let out a 'hmph' as she moved to settle herself under the covers again.

She was just beginning to drift off, strangely unhappy with herself, when she heard him begin to hum.

Her lips curved up into a sleepy, silly sort of smile when she heard him. It was the same tune – something of a ditty, she thought – and he had a very pleasant voice for it. Not a professional sort, perhaps, but certainly something one could happily fall asleep to.

But she wasn't going to fall asleep to it, of course. She was going to go tell him how inconsiderate he was, and mention that he wasn't supposed to whistle _or_ hum, as long as he was going to be outside her window. Hermione had just kicked off her covers a bit tiredly when she heard him start to sing.

"_Sul mare luccia l'astro d'argento... Placida è l'onda, prospero è il vento..."_

It was something nearly under his breath, but it carried very well – in fact, it carried all the way into her chest and down into her toes, and it sent blood rushing to her face.

"What are you _doing?_" Hermione demanded, as she threw open the curtains again.

Blaise turned his attention to her, where he leaned lazily against the trunk of the tree. His eyes had a wicked sort of spark to them now. "I'm singing _Santa Lucia_ at your window," he said. "I thought that was the sort of thing women liked."

Hermione felt her face heat further, and found herself desperately relieved that it was dark, inside and out. "Excuse me?" she said, for lack of anything better.

"It's Italian," he added, as though she might not know this, and perhaps it might make some sort of difference.

"I am _aware_ that you were singing in Italian," Hermione muttered at him. She stopped, and had to re-examine that sentence. Aha. There was a handsome man sitting outside her window, singing to her in Italian. That was what was wrong with this scene. She narrowed her eyes at him. "You've done this before, haven't you," she accused.

Blaise set a hand to his heart. "You've caught me. I have. I've plenty of practice." He leaned forward, toward the window. "Actually..." Hermione felt herself leaning forward to hear him, in spite of herself. His mouth quirked again, boyishly. "I used to sing it for my mother, every year at Valentine's."

Hermione was suddenly very glad that she was leaning against the window sill already. If she hadn't been, she thought, she might have melted into a little puddle of insensible goo on the floor. And that really would have been embarrassing, not to mention unhygenic, and it would make a terrible mess for whoever had to wipe her up-

"You're smiling," he said suddenly, and she blinked, feeling her legs waver in strength again.

"I- I am _not_," Hermione said firmly, but she could feel the muscles of her mouth twitching again, back into that silly little smile she'd had before.

He was close. There was only really a pane of glass (a _warded_ pane of glass) between them, and she felt that was really best considering the things she might have let him do if there hadn't been. Wards were there to keep dangerous people out of one's house. And Blaise Zabini was a _very _dangerous man at the moment.

Blaise leaned forward, to tap his finger gently on the glass, where she'd sometime placed her own hand. She saw his eyes. They were strangely intense, darker than usual, and dilated from the darkness; more, his eyes were entirely focused on her own. "Hermione," he said softly. "Open the window."

She had the lock open before she could rightly think about consequences and _Obliviate_ charms and stupid Parvati's advice. And then, when the glass was gone, he was reaching through to lock his hand behind her neck and draw her forward, and his callused hand was hot and tingly against her skin, his thumb rubbing over a sensitive spot that made her lips part in a gasp. There was a moment of suspension, there – a time when she could smell him distinctly, feel him nearing, her eyelashes brushing his cheek... and then, he brought his mouth to hers, and Hermione found that she was both mentally and physically at a loss for words.

Hermione wasn't quite sure what she'd been expecting out of her first kiss. Well, perhaps she'd been expecting it _sooner_, for one, but that could hardly be helped. She'd probably not expected to get it while leaning halfway out her window. Neither had she expected to have it with an ex-Slytherin, though that was more a matter of practicality than prejudice considering how few of those she knew. But mostly, she was amazed to find that it was an experience that went much further than her lips. It spread like a shiver, all the way through her body and down to her fingertips; and when his tongue flicked out over her bottom lip, she found herself clinging even more tightly to the windowsill for fear that she might faint dead away at her sudden lightheadedness.

Blaise was hardly done with just that. She felt one of his hands move up from her neck to tangle in her hair, and his other hand's fingers tickling up her chin to angle her head toward him. He took advantage of the slight part of her lips to slide his tongue lightly over hers, and the last shreds of Hermione's rationality noted that he tasted just a hint like wine, and quite a bit like himself. Before she knew quite was she was doing, she'd reached out to clutch her fingers in the sleeve of his robe and pull him closer, moving her mouth tentatively against his with a tiny, desperate little sound.

This turned out to be something of a mistake, as Blaise let out a sudden yelp, and broke away to steady himself on the windowsill. Hermione blinked furiously, coming back to herself as she saw that he'd nearly slipped off the oak branch entirely. His own face was slightly flushed, she saw, and his hair falling distractedly into his eyes – had _she_ done that?

She was still staring at him breathlessly when he'd righted himself, trying to find her mind again so she could scold it for taking off on her so quickly.

"Well," he managed, glancing up from under those curls in his eyes, "that was certainly interesting." His eyes were already on her lips again as he said it, though, and she knew he was going to kiss her again. Hermione found she really couldn't protest at all when he did, reaching out to catch her chin again and pressing his lips down on hers more hungrily. That little rational voice in her head said that he was likely going to fall again, but for one of the only times in her life, Hermione promptly told it to shut up.

His hands traced over her cheeks next, fingers rubbing at her cheekbone, her jaw, at some point descending to the arched column of her neck. She found herself a rather more enthusiastic participant this time, even going so far as to nibble experimentally at his lower lip, which made him let out his breath sharply and reach out to kiss her very hard.

"Oh," she whimpered against his mouth, not much listening to herself. "Come in, _please._"

At first, she thought he must not have been listening, because he continued kissing her, his breaths coming more quickly now, his hot mouth devouring hers. His thumb rubbed over her collarbone once, causing her to make another of those little noises, making her suddenly very aware that she'd appreciate those marvelous fingers even _more_ if they were go slightly lower. At any other time, the thought would have mortified her, but right now she was seriously contemplating the idea that she should simply _tell_ him that.

Blaise tugged his mouth back from hers, then, catching his breath slowly. His thumb rubbed over the top of her collarbone again, once, before he leaned forward slightly, his eyes even darker than before.

"I told you," he said in a low voice. "The window's too small."

Hermione could swear she saw him grin at her again, then, as he took away his fingers and his lips and started climbing back down the tree.


	13. Chapter 13

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** Hey! I exist! In spite of the world's best efforts, even.

Please enjoy, and sorry for the godawful lateness.

_Thirteen._

Hermione didn't sleep very much. Not much at all, in fact. Regardless, she felt it necessary to _pretend_ as though she had, and so she came down to open the door only after she had paced for half the night, made her bed, paced a little more, taken a shower, and sit down to watch the clock tick. Even so, she found herself standing at the door for another full ten minutes, trying to decide whether it would be too desperate to open the door and hope for things to go back to normal.

Well. Maybe not_entirely_ normal. She realized she'd taken on a slight flush momentarily, still staring at the door handle.

Would he be out there? What if he was? What if he just... just came in and continued where he'd left off? Would she necessarily mind if he did?

"You're _still pink_, Harry."

No, he probably wouldn't. Not with those two still outside.

"Just... try a light-bending spell, I guess. It has to fade at some point, right?"

Hermione opened the door before she could stop herself, now curious in spite of herself.

"I swear to god," Harry was muttering, "when I get my hands on him..." Hermione let out a strangled noise, trying to stop her laugh as she saw the two. They turned to look at her as one. Harry straightened his glasses self-consciously.

The two had, at some point during the night, somehow managed to get themselves turned a bright, pastel pink; in addition, Harry was sporting the last remains of a less-friendly fire ward, his clothing scorched and full of ashes.

Ron drew himself up with what dignity he still retained. Harry managed only to look supremely embarrassed.

"Good god," Hermione sighed, shaking her head and drawing her wand. "It's just a self-perpetuating spell. _Honestly,_ the two of you can be so dense." She raised the wand with a careful flick – and let out a cry of surprise as it floated directly up out of her hand.

"You really _are_ daft," Zabini's voice floated over, from over Harry and Ron's heads. He was frowning, his own wand lifted in the air delicately. "You're not uncursed _yet_, you know."

_Cursed?_ Ron mouthed to himself, eyebrows coming together in surprise. Harry merely adjusted his glasses, looking concerned.

"Oh?" Hermione managed, trying to sound as though she _hadn't_ spent the night thinking of... things. "And what exactly is the worst I could do, Mister Auror? Turn _myself_ pink?"

Blaise flipped his wand again – her own went flying through the air, to land in his left hand. "How about make the _curse_ self-perpetuating?" he asked with raised eyebrows, now taking long, lazy steps toward her front door. "I think that might just tangle things enough that even Vector couldn't uncurse you."

"What's this about a curse, Hermione?" Harry said, suspicion written all over his pasel-pink face.

Hermione saw Blaise hesitate, just for a moment, on his way to the door. It occurred to her that she wouldn't have noticed such a slip had she not been so fiercely concentrated on his movements... but that, naturally, was a thought to be avoided just now. "Just a minor difficulty I got myself into," she lied quickly, as Blaise's eyes met hers. "I fumbled a bit of research – Zabini has been _kind_ enough to help me with removing the effects."

Ron looked back at the Auror with narrowed eyes. "Right. Hermione botched a spell. And_you're_ going to fix what _she_ couldn't manage?" He gave a disbelieving laugh. "That has got to be the stupidest lie I've heard in years."

Zabini's face grew quite like stone in that instant, and Hermione inwardly cringed. Apparently, Ron had struck some sort of nerve. The Auror lifted his wand – Ron reached for his own in shock, but was just too late to avoid the spell.

"_Abruptum. Abripio."_ His wand came down with a vicious speed, but his voice was almost eerily calm.

Ron flinched, still fumbling at his wand. He paused, surprised, as nothing happened.

Zabini replaced his wand up one sleeve, and continued walking for the door. "Hermione Granger is not an Encyclopedia Magica," he said shortly. "Consider for a moment that there are others in this world that are somewhat competent at what they've been trained to do." He paused just at the steps, then added: "Moody would like to speak to the two of you."

Ron blinked, still somewhat confused. Harry, meanwhile, blinked behind his glasses. "What?" he said to Zabini. "_Now?_"

Zabini shrugged. "Do you really want to assume a later date and be proven wrong?"

There was a thoughtful pause, at this. Few forces in the magical world were enough to make one so edgy as the possibility of a slighted Mad-Eye Moody.

Ron scowled, crossing his arms belligerently. "You're going to have to un-pink us first, Zabini."

Hermione saw Blaise's face tighten very slightly more, with carefully hidden irritation. "Firstly, Weasel-" This, he enunciated slowly. "-un-pink is not a verb in any language that I know. And secondly, you have the perceptions of a goldfish."

Hermione pressed a hand to her forehead with a sigh, even as he passed her in the doorway. Ron was just looking to respond again indignantly, when Harry patted him on the shoulder. "You've already been un-pinked, Ron," he said, already gesturing for the street.

The Weasley closed his mouth with a deepening scowl, glancing back at the doorway toward Hermione.

"If he does a single thing out of line," he told her fiercely, "you just call one of us. We'll straighten him out proper, sarcasm or no sarcasm."

Hermione gave a half-hearted smile, in spite of her weariness and the night's events. "If he does something I don't like," she informed Ron. "I'll hex him myself."

Ron blinked, apparently somewhat surprised by the suggestion. After a moment's thought, though, he nodded slowly, and turned his attention to the street once again. Harry made a motion somewhat similar to a lazy salute, as the two of them rounded the corner with the tell-tale 'pop' of a disapparating pair.

Hermione turned into her house, closing the door behind her. Zabini was already standing in her den, staring down at the floor with a piece of chalk and a few notes in hand.

"Well," he said shortly, all prior familiarity gone from his voice. "The sooner you sit down, the sooner we end this whole mess of a week."

Hermione felt a sudden, keen stab in her chest. "Oh," she said finally. "Yes."

If he noticed the slight weakness of her tone, he didn't show it in the least.

0-0-0-0-0

_Hermione Granger,_ Blaise Zabini wrote in his little mental journal, _is the entire world's god-damn idol._

He stared down at the concentric circles of chalk, which had been growing steadily in the last half-hour of work. The time had been silent – neither he nor his very feminine host had made so much as a sound.

_Hermione Granger is not satisfied with being the most brainy woman in the world,_ he tried again._Hermione Granger must also have famous bosom friends, one of which she probably still has an unsurpassable crush on._

His chalk broke on the wood floor, and he only barely managed to check a growl of supreme frustration. _Hermione Granger is an entirely untouchable woman whom Blaise Zabini should have known much better than to even contemplate pursuing with any modicum of interest!_

"Because clearly," Blaise muttered sardonically to himself. "She's much too good for any living soul on this earth."

"Wh-what was that?" Hermione said from her place across the circle. She sounded just a little shaky, and he felt the slightest hint of guilt overtake him. All right, so he was being unfair. She wasn't the one who'd been intimating such a thing, after all. But damn it, could it have been so much of an effort to defend his personage from her two admirers just a _bit?_

"I _said_," he replied sharply, "that this circle is needlessly complicated."

She frowned over at him from behind a few loose strands of chestnut hair. He knew better than to think she believed that rather blatant lie, but she didn't call him on it. Instead, she pointed out: "You were the one who designed it."

This statement didn't buoy his mood in particular. The fact that he didn't even bother trying to turn it back on her again probably spoke volumes for the fact.

Hermione frowned more deeply, and he blinked as she stood up abruptly. "Right," she said. "Look, I'm sorry if Harry and Ron somehow hurt your feelings, but perhaps you should stop taking it out on the closest human being." She paused, then added: "That would be me, at the moment."

"I've said nothing insulting to you," Blaise responded shortly, trying to keep his eyes unconcernedly on the circle in front of him. As though the air were talking to him._You're nothing,_ he thought at her fiercely. _From now on, you're nothing to me, and I'm going to treat you as such._

"Your tone says more than enough!" Hermione said hotly, and he clenched his teeth at another nearly unnoticeable tremor in her voice. "Well I'm sorry if the world has conspired to insult you personally today, Zabini, but I don't have to stand here and be the sole recipient of whatever mood you've acquired!"

Blaise kept his eyes on the circle. He forced himself to watch it, instead of looking up at her. "Actually," he said. "You do. I'm breaking the curse on you at the moment, and I can't do that from another room."

"Another room?" she said, almost incredulously. "Is _that_ what you think I mean?" She reached out to grab the chalk from his hand abruptly, forcing him to glance up at her. Her face was flushed and tight with some unhappy emotion. "Forgive me. Maybe I was unclear. I'd actually prefer that you leave. At the moment, I trust myself more with this damned circle than I do you."

The guilt that had begun to churn in his stomach disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. Blaise stood up slowly, looking her in the eyes with a suddenly calm, white-hot fury. He enunciated his next words very slowly, with a singular weight added to each one.

"Good. Luck."

He didn't get a chance to see her suddenly bewildered face. He was already turned around and headed for the door for the second time in as many days.

0-0-0-0-0

Hermione had never felt like such a terrible wretch before in her life.

Well... no. That wasn't entirely true. Her first year somewhat approached this. Being told she was too much of a know-it-all busybody to have any friends of her own had been particularly wrenching. But... oh, at least she'd hoped by now that she'd managed to get over that phase of life. The one where she always seemed to say and do exactly the wrong things, miss all the important social cues, somehow manage to hit people's most sensitive spots without even trying.

"I'm such an idiot," she muttered to herself blankly. She'd sit down against the wall a little uselessly once she'd realized he wasn't coming back.

It was entirely possible she'd said something terrible without realizing it. One didn't go directly from... Scrabble... to this, without any sort of trigger. Maybe there was something naturally stand-offish about her? Something that made people dislike her until she saved them from trolls or something.

_Then again,_ she thought tiredly,_he's awfully touchy._

She glanced at the unfinished circle morosely, eyes traveling over the broken bit of chalk at the edge. "...I'm sure I have more important things to worry about."

Like how she was going to survive this bit of stupidity. Damn it all. When she'd said she trusted herself more with the circle than Zabini, she'd been being ironic, referencing the fact that she would bring her house down on top of her before she managed to undo such a complex curse on herself. Apparently the master of evil, sardonic wit had missed that part.

-_wait._

Hermione blinked, replaying the conversation.

That _had_ been what had set him off, hadn't it? That, in particular. Before, he'd been at least willing to pretend he wasn't angry.

"Oh," she managed. "_Oh._"

It made sense, in a strange way. And at the same time, it didn't. Because Blaise Zabini wasn't... he was... well, _smug_, and self-assured. And always, always certain, even if he wasn't _right._

But everyone had insecurities. Goodness knew, she had enough of her own.

_I ought to apologize,_ she thought, suddenly feeling a little twinge in her chest. _Well, he ought to apologize too, but still._

The knock on her door made her jump in surprise. It also made her hand skid on the chalk, her elbow to jam into the bookcase next to her, and her chin to hit the top of the coffee table with a very nasty thud. Hermione felt her teeth jar – for a second, there were fuzzy little stars in front of her eyes from the pain. "Ow," she managed. "Ow, ow, ow..."

The knock didn't sound again, but it didn't have to. She rose carefully to her feet, rubbing at her abused and bruising jaw with a wince. "Coming," she mumbled, fully aware that no one on the outside could possibly hear her.

Hermione opened the door with hazy eyes, still feeling the pain. "Sorry, I sli-" She was forced to pause at the wand that jabbed into her throat.


	14. Chapter 14

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** Er. Quick, huh? Don't get used to it, I'm afraid. It's probably just because I have a bad luck thing about leaving off at thirteen. Makes me uncomfortable.

Also, clearly I was just screwing around with you all last chapter. I like to think I'm not quite _that_trite.

_Fourteen._

Hermione remembered to breathe.

"The wards only work as long as your bloody door's closed," Zabini muttered a bit tiredly, flicking his wand away from her throat and putting it up. "That you've survived even this long is a miracle, frankly."

Hermione felt a little of the pressure lift from her chest, even though her jaw was aching. "Sorry," she said weakly, stepping back almost submissively to let him back inside. The acquiescent gesture seemed to surprise him dimly, though he stepped through all the same.

"Let's finish up the circle," he said shortly, his voice still strained with discomfort and touched with a bit of anger.

"No," Hermione said. "Not yet. Look, we have to talk, Zabini-"

"You want me out, I want to go," he cut her off irritatedly. "I understand that, but I've got a job to do, and no one said I had to like it. Even you have to admit that you'll be somewhere unfortunate without a paddle if I don't finish the damned counter-curse."

"Zabini-" she tried again, feeling distinctly ill-at-ease, but he interrupted her again.

"-which is my fault _anyway_, and we both know it's the case, so you can stop stepping around it politely, because I said I was going to keep you alive and kicking, and I am _going _to keep you alive and-"

"_Zabini!"_

He stopped, scowling in her doorway. Hermione reached over to close the door behind him.

"I'm sorry," she said. And immediately felt a good deal better.

Zabini blinked. And in spite of herself, she found it very nearly adorable. Infatuating, really. Entirely stupid of her, especially considering he'd just stormed out of her house. "I said some things I shouldn't have," Hermione told him. "And I was the one to press the issue, in any case."

A simple apology seemed to have taken the wind out of his sails. For once, instead of looking carefully neutral, he looked... stymied. Stunned.

And very human.

"I might have understood something," she told him, somewhat sheepishly. "Even if I'm wrong, I thought you ought to hear a few things, because- well, just because." Hermione cleared her throat nervously, well aware that this was about to be an awkward conversation. "I... I think quite a bit of you. Er. That is- I have for a bit, all things notwithstanding- and I- oh, _dear._" She could feel her face heating up terribly.

Blaise wasn't helping. In fact, he looked something close to frozen in place. Apparently, this was not something they studied in Auror training. In fact, she had it on rather good authority that Mad-Eye personally advised against dealing with the opposite gender at all.

"I thought- I thought about how much work it must have taken to get- to be- I mean,_especially _as a Slytherin- oh, that didn't come out right, did it?" Hermione desperately hoped she wasn't digging herself into nearly as deep a hole as she was beginning to suspect. She hurried on in a bit of a panic, trying to find the right words. "And I wondered, you know, I- mostly _why_ you did it, and I didn't even begin to understand until you were around a bit more. And once I did, it made me feel like a bit of a useless person compared. I mean- I mean-" Oh _god._

He was still staring at her. "Granger," he said slowly. "I am not at all certain what you just said. I _think_ it sounded vaguely complimentary, but I can't be certain." She opened her mouth to try and fix things, but found herself stalled by the fingertips that were suddenly grazing under her chin. "Did you get yourself a concussion in the half an hour I was gone?" he asked suspiciously, noting the bruise on her chin.

"Hungh?" She felt her eyes glaze over a little at the feel of calluses drifting over her neck. Oh, articulate. Very articulate. Winning, even.

"You're not inspiring a good deal of confidence in me," he muttered, grabbing her gently by the shoulder and steering her toward the kitchen. "Where do you keep your bandages?"

"C-cupboard. Next to the fridge." Weren't they just- having a heart-to-heart, or something? Or half of one? Or an attempt at half of one? How could he be so-

Hermione caught a slight reddish tint to the tan on his cheeks. And the entire debacle of the day – the week, even – fixed itself in a heartbeat. _Oh,_ she thought, noting the strange fuzzy glow that had overtaken her head. _That feels nice._

Of course, it could have been a concussion.

"Sit down," Blaise sighed at her, the tension much less present between them now. She obeyed almost automatically, as he moved to pull a little box of butterfly bandages down from the shelf. When he pulled one out and knelt down in front of her with narrowed eyes, she nearly forgot to breathe. When he reached out to set it gingerly to her chin, she _did_ forget.

"Clumsy," he muttered, the slight flush already subsiding from his face.

"Not usually," she breathed, surprised at her own ability to mount a defense.

When she didn't continue for a time, he looked up at her uncertainly. "...I'm sorry too," he said. "I can't think of a good excuse for my behavior. I certainly shouldn't be leaving you alone, at the least."

Hermione swallowed. She didn't realize she'd caught his fingers between hers until his face changed to a peculiar expression. "I think you're a good person," she said, finding the words she'd been looking for very belatedly. "You're _better than me_, Zabini. The only brave things I've ever done have been for people I loved. And you- you risk your life all the time for people you might not even _like_-"

Blaise was much, much closer. She was trapped, and he was close enough for her to breathe in his scent, and she wasn't complaining.

"I wouldn't say that," he said with a swallow. His voice was very slightly hoarse.

_If he doesn't kiss me in the next moment,_ Hermione realized, _I'm going to take matters into my own hands. I won't even have a choice. I'll simply do it._

Blaise leaned himself forward slowly. She closed her eyes with a sharp intake of breath.

"-Friday," he said suddenly, pulling back abruptly.

Hermione might have let out a noise. She opened her eyes, feeling frustrated and cheated. "Friday _what?_" she said, a little embarrassed at the tone in her voice.

"It's Friday," he said, standing back up again and brushing at his robes. "You're supposed to be meeting your parents for dinner tonight."

_And? AND? _

A moment ago, Hermione had been feeling quite amiable toward him - but right now she was contemplating strangulation.

"You're still cursed," he added, as though reading her mind. Well... probably not. Had he been reading her mind, he would probably have had a more significant reaction to those suggestions Lavender had implanted there.

"In which case, I can't possibly go," Hermione said, rather reasonably, she thought. _Hint. _"And even if I _could_ go, technically, it wouldn't be the best idea to go off on my own when you're here, as you said-"

"Well naturally, I'll be coming with you," Blaise said with a blink.

There was silence for a moment, while Hermione contemplated this incredibly unexpected turn of events. _I believe this is called role-reversal,_ she thought to herself, a bit petulantly. _I don't want him to meet my parents. I want him to kiss me again. How hard is that to understand?_

"I wouldn't want to be rude," he continued, oblivious to her thoughts. "I _was_ invited, after all, and while your mother jogged on the conversation before I could reply, I believe she'll have taken it as a yes-"

"She _what?_" Hermione's eyes widened, and she leapt to her feet, thoughts of lips and such forgotten. Well, somewhat. Temporarily. "And you didn't think it might be nice to _inform_ me of this?"

Blaise looked a bit taken aback. "I... you know, I didn't much think about it, I suppose. Things happened."

"Things-" Hermione cut off, suddenly flushed. "Well, that- but she didn't even tell me!" Weren't mothers supposed to inform their daughters about things like that? 'Honey, your Aunt Lynn is going to be having a baby boy soon', 'Honey, you're going to a magical school in September', 'Honey, I invited the man you're having illicit thoughts about to have a night of awkward social interaction with us'-

No, she thought suddenly, her heart sinking a bit. Her mother wouldn't even have thought of it. She was impulsive and absent-minded. And she'd probably expected Blaise to say something on the matter to Hermione, at that.

"The circle was nearly done, in any case," Blaise said, looking distracted. He glanced toward her. "Do you need a hand?"

A sneaky, shameless part of Hermione encouraged her to say yes. Fortunately, that part of her was much, much smaller than the more dignified and truthful part that made up the majority of Hermione Granger. "I should be fine," she said, getting slowly to her feet. "It was just a- OW!" She hissed as her foot caught on the chair leg, jamming her knee into the table. There was a long pause, while she slowly regathered the shreds of her dignity. "...you know," she observed through clenched teeth. "I'm not going to miss the random accidents."

"And you're sure they're really a result of the curse?" Blaise asked her, false curiosity coloring his voice. It took her a second to find the good-natured humor in his tone. It surprised her a bit to think it might have been there the entire time.

"Ha, ha," Hermione responded dryly, now acutely aware of a few of the things she had rambled to him in the past quarter hour and quickly doing her best to repress the memory of them. She had always been told that sexual attraction would turn her temporarily stupid when it hit. Only now did she really believe it.

His hand closed on her elbow to guide her into the den, then, and she found herself very suddenly quiet.

"...sit down," he said, gesturing toward the unfinished circle. Then, after a thoughtful moment: "_Carefully._"

Hermione followed instructions, stepping away from him and lifting each foot slowly over the chalk-markings so as not to smudge them. Blaise, for his part, gave the circle a last glance-over before sitting down himself, his robes settling behind him.

"It's really easier to break spells around dusk," he murmured to himself, tapping the chalk against the floor with a frown. "I suppose a waning moon does nearly as good. And we _are_ a good ways from Tuesday, otherwise this would be a devil."

"Does that actually hold in practice?" Hermione asked curiously, unable to stop herself. "Curses and Tuesdays, I mean. I know there's a fluctuation of weekly energies, but I was always under the impression it was incredibly weak."

Blaise shrugged, tracing another line into the formula now. "In small spells, you're right – it's negligible. But curses this complicated, with so much power behind them... it does add up." He frowned, and scratched in another line. Then, with a blink: "I believe we're done. Wait- no, give me a moment." He pulled a folded up piece of parchment from his pocket and unfurled it, consulting and comparing the two.

Hermione did her best not to fidget, as he stood up to work his way around the circle, looking at each section in turn. It was difficult. In point of fact, it was nearly impossible. There was something to be said for being thorough, though, so she did her best not to interrupt him.

There were a few marks made. Another prowl around the circle. And another, just for good measure. Hermione tried to console herself with the idea that the nightmare was nearly over.

Finally, Blaise nodded to himself. The parchment was tucked away; he drew his wand.

"Try not to do anything sudden," he told her. Hermione nodded slowly, and closed her eyes tightly.

It was time to hurry up and wait. And hope that he knew exactly what he was doing.

_I trust the Auror casting this spell,_ Hermione told herself mentally. _I do. I do, I do. Everything will be fine._

Had he not personally informed her it was stupid to trust him, not so long ago?

_No! I, um. Trust. Yes. Absolutely._

She could hear his footsteps moving softly. Slowly. His voice murmuring, low and just beneath her hearing.

A little flutter of panic slipped up from her stomach into her throat. She couldn't breathe. She wanted to – to move, to get out, to jump up and dive into a corner somewhere. She could feel the spell around her straining; the invisible connections holding tenaciously to the surface of her skin, like another layer of her body. He was trying to make it let go. It didn't want to let go.

"Za-Zabini-" Her voice choked a little, with growing panic.

"It's fine," he said, his steps echoing in her ears. "Stay still."

The air in the circle was growing thick with magic. Intellectually, she knew it shouldn't have impeded her breathing, but in truth, she was beginning to hyperventilate.

"That's not going to help," Hermione heard him say. "Keep your breathing steady. If you have a good rhythm, it will make things go more quickly."

She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut, trying to obey. She really did want to. Anything that would get rid of the black cloud that had been hanging over her for so long was desirable. But her body was having quite a bit of difficulty complying with those desires of hers, and the sticky feel of the dark spell was _highly_ distracting.

A tiny whimper slipped out when she heard him make a gesture, and felt the spell begin to _peel_ off her.

"Still," he said again, trying to keep his voice low. "Keep still, Hermione. It's going well."

It didn't feel 'well'. It felt like any moment something was going to hold on too tightly, and pull off the rest of her skin along with the undesirable bits.

Was this what happened every time you unraveled a curse? Did it always feel this- this awful, this _disgusting_ and dangerous? She had been able to anticipate every part of the process before now, but it was quickly entering the territory of the non-theoretical now. She had been afraid of _normal_ practical exams. And this was hardly something on the order of changing a hedgehog into a pincushion.

Hermione suddenly remembered Blaise's hesitation with Transfiguration, and felt still less confident in spite of herself.

"You're not breathing," he told her, and she could hear the frown in his voice. "Relax. Take a deep breath." There was a slight pause, while another edge of the curse uncurled. "I know what I'm doing, Hermione."

_Oh,_ she thought somewhat hysterically. _I bet you say that to all the girls._

"If you pass out," he told her blandly, "we are going to have a problem." His mild tone did nothing to disguise the truth of the situation. 'A problem' was likely an understatement, considering that one wrong move might smudge the painfully accurate circles he had sketched on the floor of her den.

Hermione took a very halting breath. Shortly, the spell began to pull apart again. Slowly. Very... slowly.

"Breathing goes in two parts," she heard him mutter. Then: "Let it out. Good. Keep breathing, now. I can't keep telling you."

"I'm breathing," Hermione managed. "You see? I'm breathing. I couldn't be talking if I weren't breathing." At least the tone had less of a hysterical edge than she could have expected.

"Very good. You've mastered the basics of being a human being. Try not to regress too much from here."

The slick, clinging feeling pulled itself off of one of her fingers. Hermione took a shuddering breath.

0-0-0-0-0

On second thought, perhaps he should have done something more to relax her before this.

Blaise sighed a bit to himself as he stepped slowly around the circle, pulling the spell off in layers as he went. Really, this was the easy part, after the circle. It was more of a routine curse, once you got past the Arithmancy, though it required a delicate touch. It was one of the few things he could safely say he was more qualified to handle than Mad-Eye was.

Hermione, on the other hand, seemed petrified by the whole process. He supposed it could be a bit discomforting if you hadn't experienced it before. He had somewhat naturally assumed it was something she had dealt with before, considering the very colorful way she'd spent the past few years of her life. His mistake, once again. He would have to feel bad about it later.

_Note to self: take nothing for granted. _

It was one of the first things he'd been taught. After number one, which involved vigilance, constant, and an exclamation point at the end.

Another layer of the spell broke off, slithering away from the woman in the circle. She let out a little whimper again, and he cursed himself silently.

"We're getting closer," he told Hermione reassuringly.

"It doesn't feel like it," she managed, eyes still screwed tightly shut, hands clenched white in her lap. At least she wasn't hyperventilating anymore.

"I'll buy you an ice cream later," Blaise said, managing to make his voice sound lazy and unconcerned. "With sprinkles on top."

"A brand new book," she corrected him, taking another shuddering breath. It was beginning to steady out now. "Something muggle. Fantasy. Entirely ridiculous."

"Only if you behave," he responded dryly. Then - "Breath. In, now."

Hermione obeyed, if only from instinct. She had that thing about authority. He quickly discarded that thought, as it would inevitably lead to distracting things if he concentrated on it for too long. She'd been two inches away from him only a half-hour or so back, after all.

No, no. Curse. Delicate, evil, dark curse.

"How- how long is this going to take?" Hermione asked him, squirming just a little as another layer peeled off. "I mean. An estimate. Roughly._Something._"

Blaise considered the question, twirling his wand about a bit.

"...another hour. Perhaps two."

Hermione let out a strangled noise.

"I'll make it two _very _ridiculous muggle books," he reassured her.


	15. Chapter 15

**Perfect Marks**

**By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** Writer's block and life in general conspired against me for a good long while. I apologize for the wait.

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_Fifteen._

"What do you think?"

The voice, sudden and unexpected, distracted him from his reading for a moment. A young Blaise Zabini paused over his copy of _Vittory's Transfiguration_, and fought to keep the rising irritation from his face. "About what?" he responded coolly, keeping his eyes on the page in front of him.

Millicent crossed her arms slowly, and leaned into the table next to him. "About Hermione Granger," she said.

Blaise, already halfway back to his reading, jerked his head up abruptly at this answer, an angry exclamation on his lips. It died as he saw that Millicent wasn't smirking with that knowing, mocking sympathy – no, in fact, her narrowed eyes were perfectly fixed on the creature in question. Hermione was sitting across the room, sandwiched (as usual) between Gryffindor's own red-headed Tweedle-dum and lightning-scarred Tweedle-dee. Weasley was elbowing her with a grin. Her face was quickly turning red, and she seemed to be laughing behind a book somewhat sheepishly.

His eyes flickered toward Millicent; the Slytherin girl was wearing an angry scowl on her face.

No. She didn't know about the last few days he'd spent in Flitwick's classroom, turning wads of notebook paper into friendly little mice. Sitting neutrally (if not amiably) next to Granger, listening to her prattle on about advanced underlying theories of Transfiguration she wasn't technically supposed to know. Millicent didn't, couldn't possibly know whose book he was currently turning pages in.

"...I don't much care for her," he said, with a shrug and a turn of the page; this little white lie had the pleasant advantage of being utterly true. "Why?"

Millicent's scowl only deepened further. She crossed her arms, leaning back further so that she could simply sit on the table. Blaise noted this dimly, filing it away in his mental journal: _Things I Know About Millicent That She Would Rather I Not._ These gestures were uneasy – in fact, they bore a notable similarity to those of a cornered animal. Clearly, Millicent found the subject of Granger to be an uncomfortable one. Which begged the question: why had she brought her up in the first place?

Silence dragged on for a moment, as Millicent digested this answer. She seemed to find it an encouraging one, after a moment, seeing as she soon continued. "She's ugly as sin," Millicent said bitterly. _Like me_. Blaise heard the words, unspoken. Among those things he knew about Millicent was the not-so-secret fact that she believed herself even more repulsive than she really was. "-and she cheats," Millicent added. "Everyone knows it. Rattling off answers straight from the textbook... isn't that just classic memory potion stuff?"

Blaise closed the book, in order to regard her more fully. His lips turned downward, very slightly. "...I doubt that's what it is," he said, very calmly. Meanwhile, he thought to himself: _Ah. I see._

"Then what?" Millicent said, with a sudden, frigid fury. She whirled on him, lips tight, eyes very slightly puffy in that way that suggested she'd been crying into her pillow only the night before. "What does she do that I don't?" she demanded. "What does she _have_ that I don't?"

_Genius,_ Blaise thought, with a slight pang of bitterness all his own. _She has genius. And you can't... you'll never have it. Neither will I. _"Time," he said promptly, instead. "She has _time_, Millicent. Granger doesn't have a life to speak of, other than her books." He eyed her speculatively. "Any of us could do just as well as she does, if we only gave up everything else that mattered."

Millicent pressed her lips together even more tightly. Her knuckles whitened slightly, on the edge of the table. "...you're right," she said finally, and Blaise saw her rigid posture relax just a little. "She doesn't have any real friends, anyway." She shot him a fleetingly grateful look as she levered herself up from the table. Blaise, meanwhile, felt a vague pang of pity in his chest.

_Because I'll help you lie to yourself,_ he thought. _That makes me your friend._ Then: _I hope I'm not your only one._

He found his eyes drawn back to Granger in spite of his best efforts, even as Millicent started back for the front of the hall.

She was still smiling. Tenuously. Afraid to believe in her own good fortune, lest it disappear like a fleeting shadow.

_What a blessedly lucky child,_ Blaise observed to himself, fingers clenching on the edge of the book's spine. _That genius – a mind like a steel trap. Loyal friends. Family. And even so, on top of that, lucky enough to be one of the one in ten thousand muggle children to be born with magic._

"Fate flows only as a trickle or a flood," Blaise murmured aloud. Hermione, across the room, gave another laugh, and ducked beneath her book. He felt another stab of jealousy.

"_I don't understand how only one of you could manage even an E,"_ McGonagall had said disapprovingly, looking about the Transfiguration class severely. "_Those of you that made a P or worse..."_ Eyes on Blaise. On Millicent. On any number of others, scorn apparent in those spectacled eyes. "_...I advise you to go and crack open a book, for once in this course. Clearly, you will not be able to slide by on your natural genius."_

He wondered if Hermione knew just how fortunate she was. If she appreciated it quite as fully as she ought to have done. And if she did... whether that would have made it any more bearable. Any more fair.

"...no," he muttered to himself, snapping the Transfiguration book open with an angry twitch of the mouth. "I don't think that it would."

And across the room, Hermione laughed once more.

000000

"Not so bad," Hermione agreed, almost amiably. There was a very thick book clutched in her arms – they had compromised on a single fantasy novel with more than a thousand pages. Of course, _picking_ that book had taken her the better part of an hour and a half. And here he'd been thinking the female shopping gene had skipped Hermione just because her clothing was boring.

"Does that mean you'd do it again?" Blaise asked her, with a purposefully casual air.

She winced abruptly, as he'd known she would. "No. I don't think so."

It was actually getting refreshing, hanging about Granger like this. Appropriately, the woman could be read like an open book.

_Well._ Blaise frowned. _Most of the time._

Sometimes, she'd simply spout something off the top of her head, surprising both of them in the process.

_You're better than me, _she'd told him. From anyone else, he would've thought it some form of dissembling. But Hermione had had that utter sincerity shining in her eyes when she'd said it. There was such a staunch honesty to her, as always. Blaise had once found it vaguely disgusting, even insulting somehow. Right now, oddly, all he could think was that it was somewhat adorable.

"What _are _you thinking about?" Hermione asked him curiously. He blinked. Ah, yes. He had been staring at her rather obviously for some time now, hadn't he?

"Your parents," he covered quickly, tugging one sleeve of his robe free of wrinkles. "I was wondering what they're like. I've never met any muggles outside of work before." And even then, the word _Obliviate_ was usually involved. He decided not to mention that.

Hermione blinked. "What – really?" she asked, looking surprised. "How amazing." She seemed to think for a moment; there again was that little nibble of the lip that told him as much. "Well..." Slowly. "They're really very similar to any old wizarding couple you might meet, I suppose. Lacking the magical aspect, obviously."

Blaise raised one eyebrow. "For once, you're being absolutely uninformative."

Hermione gave him a sheepish look; it sent a little jolt down his spine. Some very primitive part of his brain suggested that he lean in to try nibbling at her lower lip himself. He ignored it with a vengeance.

"It's not that I'm being deliberately obtuse," Hermione told him, perfectly oblivious to his sudden pains. "It's just that... I'm not quite sure how to look at it from such a different point of view. I've been raised around muggles _and_ wizards for most of my life, you know."

Blaise deliberately focused on this idea for a moment, instead of on Hermione's earnestly friendly expression. A number of people had expressed envy to him over the fact that he'd grown up around two different languages – that he'd been able to pick up both English and Italian with native fluency. Hermione's situation was surprisingly similar, now that he thought about it. None of the hard-core pure bloods would ever admit it, likely, but there was an intrinsic value in being brought up as a Muggleborn that way – and it was yet another thing that would always give Hermione a natural edge, no matter how hard they worked to match her.

Belatedly, Blaise realized that the object of his musings was looking at him with a bit of uneasy worry. "...you're frowning," Hermione said.

"I'm thinking," he replied quickly, with a little stab of guilt. "I just don't like dealing with things I have no experience with."

Hermione was terrible at spotting lies. She relaxed, almost immediately. "Don't worry about it," she told him. "It's just dinner. It probably won't even last two hours."

And that was when the feeling of terrible foreboding hit him.

000000

Dinner did not last two hours.

Hermione had missed the bad feeling on their way there, putting it down to some lingering remnant of the curse that had just been lifted from her. They'd stopped at a floo, and headed out to a drop-point somewhere near her parents' house in the country, then walked amicably for a bit, as she tried to explain what she could about muggle-life to Blaise. It was only a quarter-hour walk, if that, before the house came into view – one-story, though very nice to her mind, with its many trees and windows, and the bright garden out front that her mother so enjoyed working at. The look she managed to sneak at Blaise told her that he was somewhat impressed as well, which made her feel even more confident that things would go well.

When she took the steps up to the door and rang the doorbell, though... that was when the first pang of unease hit.

Something was... off. It was hard to say what, exactly. She turned to say something to Blaise, to defeat the rising tension in her shoulders, but cut herself off as she found him inspecting the doorway with an odd expression.

"What?" she said, blinking at his serious look.

He glanced over, frowning. "Nothing. I'm just examining the wards here." He paused, still regarding the doorway with concentration, and she felt herself panic just a little. "They look fine," he added, apparently unaware of the momentary shock he'd just caused her.

Hermione relaxed a little at that – and jumped, not a second later, as the door opened. "Hermione!"

Her mother was standing in the doorway, looking just as Hermione remembered her from the last time she'd visited – and therein lay the problem. Laura Granger was sunny and smiley, dressed in a tank-top and jeans, and absolutely covered in garden soil.

Hermione groaned, just a little. "Mum!" she said, trying to focus on the pleasure of seeing her mother again instead of the humiliation she _really_ should have expected from the beginning. Her mother darted forward to hug her with a happy little squeal, heard more often from a woman in her twenties than one in her fifties. Hermione felt a few clods of dirt settle in the open robe she'd worn over her muggle clothing. She sighed, and helplessly smiled anyway.

"Well well well!" her father's voice said from the front hall. "Who's this pretty little stranger at the door, Laura?"

"His name's Blaise," Hermione giggled into her mother's shoulder, before she could help herself. "He's taller than I am, though, so I don't think he counts as little."

She could _feel_ Blaise's surprised expression on her back. A tiny flush suffused her face. Being around her parents simply brought about memories of being young and immature. She was allowed to regress here and there, wasn't she? Oh. Dear. Was this what he was going to think of whenever he saw her now?

"Aha!" said her father, after a pause. "The bobby!" Hermione felt her mother shift aside to allow her father to go for a handshake. She blinked in alarm as she realized Blaise probably didn't know how to shake hands. Wizards tended to greet each other with bows, by and large. She strained to turn around and mouth some helpful hint, but found herself held tight by her mother, who was rather oblivious to the whole situation and was still squeezing her daughter with wild abandon.

There was a long pause – about as Hermione had feared – where she imagined her father had his hand out, dangling in midair. She sighed into her mother.

"...huh," her father said.

"Er," said Blaise.

By the time Hermione had managed to untangle herself from the beaming, dirt-caked woman that was her mother, Blaise and her father were looking at each other with puzzled, even vaguely wary looks. Her mother, finally sensing unease, broke into the silence. "So!" she said brightly. "Dinner's on the grill. It might be a few more minutes – would you like to come in, Blaise?"

Blaise nodded, embarrassment and gratefulness on his face. Hermione winced, and tried to throw him an apologetic look, but she couldn't be certain that he'd caught it.

"So," said her father, clearing his throat as they stepped inside. "What is it, exactly, that the wizard police do?"

Blaise paused again, clearly trying to translate this sentence quickly in his head. Hermione leapt in this time, before things could go sour. "Aurors," she corrected her father carefully. "They, er – they're best known for taking care of dark wizards, but they also handle the smaller legal problems, like underage magic or illegal enchantments, and..." She cut herself off again in horror, glancing at Blaise. "-and I should probably let you explain, shouldn't I?"

Blaise, thankfully, only looked amused at her rushing speech. "No no," he said, with a wave of the hand. "You seem to be translating just fine." He paused, with a slight twitch of his mouth. "I could make it easier on you and speak in Latin if you like."

Hermione let out a breath in relief, realizing that things weren't quite as brutally sunk as she'd thought. "Latin?" her father said in surprise. "Really? So you lot still use it day-to-day? Goodness, I guess it _isn't _a dead language after all."

The relief disappeared, followed quickly by a tiny, growing headache behind her eyes. Hermione hadn't quite realized how well she'd done at avoiding confusing subjects with her family until now.

"Oh no," said Blaise, glancing over at her father. "It's about as dead as Grindelwald, actually."

And yes. Things only managed to go downhill from there.

000000

Blaise was dying a slow, agonizing death by miscommunication. Although, if Hermione's face was anything to go by, she had already died of the same cause about an hour ago.

"-most dangerous thing you've encountered recently, then?" Hermione's father was asking. Blaise was fairly certain his name was Eric. Or perhaps Erin. With the spectacularly awkward pause in conversation that had happened during introductions, he'd never actually gotten around to learning the man's name.

Blaise realized, belatedly, that the man was asking him a question, and tried to come up with a quick answer over his wine. That was the problem with after-dinner drinking; it left people's mouths free to talk about all sorts of things. And what excuse could you come up with for refusing an excellent vintage wine?

"Well-" No. Probably not best to mention the mandrake. "Er-" Or the curse on Hermione. "-I had to stop a muggle from burning down a magic shop in London just before I went on leave," he said finally. A moment later, he realized that this was probably not the best thing to bring up either. In fact, he was rather desperately looking for a way to change the subject when Hermione's father whose name began with the letter 'E' proved him correct in that assumption.

"A 'muggle'?" her father said with a frown. "Didn't you learn his name? Did you even bother to find out _why _he was doing it, then? You know, I've always had issue with some of the things our Hermione tells us about how muggles are treated-"

"Dad!" Hermione said, sounding shocked. "Are you- are you actually bringing up _politics_ at the dinner table?"

"That's right, Eric," her mother said disapprovingly (Eric! His name was Eric! ...now what was her mother's?). "Really, Mr. Zabini has been kind enough to help Hermione these past few days – I hardly think you should be giving him the third degree!"

Hermione's father (yes, Eric) had the good grace to look a little abashed, but the apologetic look he gave Blaise was only halfway sincere. "I'm only looking out for my daughter, after all, Laura." Aha! Good. Listen long enough and you find out all sorts of things. Wait – where was the conversation going again?

"What does wizarding law on muggles have to do with looking out for me?" Hermione asked, somewhat crossly. Her eyebrows were raised. Going from experience... this was not a good sign.

Her father chose to ignore it. "I'm just saying that you sometimes have problems being overly trusting, sweetie." Oh. God. Apparently, the 'sweetie' was going into overtly condescending territory. Blaise, for his part, was more than willing to deal with the hostility – it didn't even involve deadly magic, after all – but Hermione seemed to be taking things very personally on his behalf. Which... come to think of it, was exactly what he'd wanted before, with Harry and Ron. Blaise paused to ponder this, as he took a sip of his wine.

"Eric!" This time the tone was edging into stern territory. Blaise took another swallow of wine. Best to be just a tiny bit drunk if a family fight was about to break out at the table. He consoled himself with the thought that Hermione was probably mortified. He thought of his own family, back in Tuscany, and made an involuntary face. It had been a year or two since his last visit, but compared, this table was positively tame.

"I don't _believe _you!" Hermione said, her voice rising an entire register. "What on earth has come over you, Dad? Is this any way to treat a guest?"

_Wait._

Blaise stopped cold over the wine, alarm bells ringing in his head... or perhaps those bells were something else. He took another, very small sip of the wine, smoothing it over his tongue carefully. _Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!_

It had been so subtle. Just a slight change to the wards – so slight he'd been convinced he'd imagined it in his nervousness. And then, in the sudden discomfort of growing hostilities, he'd been put on the defensive, so that he was thinking of social niceties instead of what they might have put in the goddamn _wine._

"Hermione," he interrupted carefully, rising from his seat. He didn't bother testing the wards. They wouldn't have been stupid enough to ignore the possibility they might apparate – whoever they were. "I've dealt with plenty of crackpot would-be politicians in my time." He was careful to inject just the right amount of cool anger, as he stepped around the table toward her. Her father was looking at him suddenly, all attentive and... suspicious, yes. Blaise inwardly winced, and took a nice, big swallow of wine on his way. As he got closer to Hermione, he saw that her mouth was working soundlessly. Her face was pale with omni-directional fury at this point. "If it makes you feel any better," he added, "at least you didn't inherit your father's inherent stupidity." Blaise patted her on the arm, while his other hand, just out of sight, worked on the wand in his sleeve.

"How- how _dare_ you-" Hermione, for once, was speechless. That was fine. It made things much more surprising when he dropped the wineglass and whipped out his wand.

"_Tego, perfectus."_

Hermione's eyes registered only a moment of surprise before they disappeared entirely.

Blaise heard the gasp from Hermione's mother, even as her father leapt to his feet to throw something at him. Whatever it was, it was hard and well-thrown, and it hit him directly in the side of the head.

"Ow," he muttered, as his vision swam. There was a pause, wherein he smiled a bit helplessly. "...I suppose I deserved that."

The last thing he was really aware of was the _bang!_ of a door slamming open. Unfortunately, he knew much better than to assume it was Hermione, dutifully running away.

The cavalry had arrived. It just wasn't _their_ cavalry.

_Well. Damn._


	16. Chapter 16

**Perfect Marks**

**By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** And again! Yes, indeed. I'm really looking forward to finishing this thing proper. That way, you know, I can work on the real novel stuff without feeling guilty. (Anyone know a good publisher in modern fantasy, by the by?)

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_Sixteen._

"Wake up."

It was a harsh voice – deliberately so. It took Blaise a moment to realize that it was being directed at him. It took him a second moment to realize that he was only just now waking up – with a pounding headache, at that.

_This seems oddly familiar._

"Don't play dumb with me, Auror," the voice rasped angrily. A foot knocked into his ribs, and Blaise rolled over, groaning. Tied up? Check. It seemed some form of the _Incarcerous_ hex. Uncreative bastards. Just because the thing was remarkably effective was no reason to go about using it over and over. The anger in the tone registered a second later, as Blaise blinked open hazy eyes.

He smiled suddenly – his best, most infuriating smirk. It was hard to do when your head was swimming and your ribs were screaming, but then, he'd practiced at it for most of his life. "You didn't catch her," he slurred out aloud.

Another kick to his ribs followed. He nearly resisted the urge to say something about cliché tricks – but then he realized that resisting had absolutely no point. They were likely only going to torture and kill him anyway. "It didn't work the first time, so you figure you'll do it again?" He laughed a little hoarsely, in spite of the sudden pains it sent up his chest. "Oh well. Third time's the charm."

Predictably, the foot hit his sternum this time. He lost his breath almost immediately. A second later, he could hear the pause as the man above him realized what he'd just said.

"...you're damned smug for a man at a Death Eater's mercy," came the comment. It soon became apparent that his captor was trying to control himself now. Getting ready to start on the interrogation proper, then.

Blaise shrugged, ignoring the pain forcefully. It would be just pitiful to start letting it affect him so early in the process. Though really, he had no doubt at all he'd be screaming soon. Death Eaters generally took to the _Cruciatus _curse rather quickly, being impatient and uncreative. Also, er, like _Incarcerous,_ it generally worked.

"Death Eater?" he said. "Do we still have those? I seem to remember something about their leader being, well, _dead._"

There was another long pause. Blaise hazarded opening his eyes again, and found that he had been thrown to the carpet in the dining room. The man who'd been speaking was, quite naturally, wearing a Death Eater's hood and mask. He was also accompanied by at least three others that Blaise could see, off-hand.

"...give me a moment," said the Death Eater finally. "I'm trying to decide how exactly to kill you. I was thinking of going with the more classic, painless green-light trick, but you do seem to hate clichés."

One of the others shifted on its feet. A female voice spoke abruptly. "The entrail-expelling curse hasn't been used in a century or two. I expect that's unique enough?"

Blaise closed his eyes again, forcing himself not to listen. _They're going to do what they're going to do,_ he told himself, bolstering his resolve. _You always knew this day was going to come._

It's how you go out that really defines your career, Moody had told him seriously. Most Aurors died young. It was a fact Blaise had long since accepted, and even taken to heart. If Moody heard anything about his death, it would be that he'd spit in someone's eyes as he went.

Speaking of.

Blaise opened his eyes again, and glanced up toward the woman that had spoken. "It's not like I don't recognize your voice, Demetria," he said with forced boredom. "That mask is fairly ugly, you know. That's the only reason I ever really discounted you as a suspect. I figured you had better fashion sense than this."

There was a pause, as the woman in question turned to regard Blaise. A moment later, she reached up to remove the mask. It peeled off slowly, allowing her full, luscious brown hair to fall down across her shoulders. There was only the slightest sheen of sweat to her face, which made her glisten attractively. Hell, the mask was probably enspelled to create the effect.

Her lips curved up into a sweet little smile. "Oh, Blaise," she said, with an almost affectionate tone to her voice. "You didn't really think I went through all that Auror training because I wanted to save little muggles, did you?"

Blaise shrugged in response. "Not really." He followed up on his original thought, then, and spat violently at her uncovered face. Unfortunately, in his hazy state, he managed only to hit her in the chest of her robes. _Well_, he thought to himself. _It's the thought that counts._

Demetria's mouth turned to a moue of distaste. "You're such a crude creature, Blaise Zabini. And a stupid one." She glanced behind her, at something he couldn't see. "We still have her parents, you know. We could make the male kill you himself if we really wanted." Her eyes glittered as she turned back to him. "Or the female. We could make him kill _her_."

This comment abruptly stole any bluster he might have worked up. Dying alone was one thing. Dying as an absolute failure was another. "...you put the Imperius on him yourself, I expect," he said finally, pulling himself up painfully on his elbows. "That's why the wards were different. The spell would have triggered them otherwise."

Demetria shrugged, flicking a wand through her fingers. His wand. Blaise resisted the urge to leap for it, irrationally. "I know how Moody works," she said. "He leaves holes the size of London in his wards sometimes." She smiled again, brilliantly. "But enough of what _I've_ done, Blaise. What I really want to know is what _you've _done. I haven't heard the particular version of Disillusionment charm you used on Miss Granger before."

Blaise remained silent – uneasy. Inwardly, he was forced to admit that these four Death Eaters held absolutely every card. They'd had a traitor – a willing one, even – and now they had their hands on three hostages. All three of which were likely to die regardless, he reminded himself forcibly.

"Go to hell," he told her promptly. Then, after a moment of thoughtfulness - "And take your horrible Celestina Warbeck music with you while you're at it. That stuff annoys _everyone _at the office, you know?"

Demetria merely sighed. He probably shouldn't have expected a much more dramatic response to his jabs. She'd been dealing with him for the past year and a half, after all. "I suppose you didn't drink nearly as much of that poison as I thought you had," she commented dryly. A moment later, she jerked his wand once through the air and he found himself propelled abruptly to his feet. Blaise staggered a bit, swaying as he tried to find some sort of precarious balance without using his arms.

Demetria glanced upward. Around. To the side. She muttered something else under her breath, pointing his wand at the ceiling. A second later, Blaise managed a much weaker smile.

"Won't work," he told her on a guess. "No matter how many times you cast it. You could use the exact same wand with the exact same spell, and it wouldn't do a thing."

The female Auror cast him a vaguely annoyed glance. "I could let you gloat a little bit more before torturing you, I suppose, but I hardly see the point. Your wit isn't nearly as devastating as you seem to think it is, Blaise."

She turned the wand on him, then, and it took a supreme act of will not to flinch. Demetria had always done only passably well with curses at work – but that had probably been a sham on her part. In spite of his earlier remarks, Blaise really hadn't expected that any of their Aurors had gone turncoat. Clearly, he hadn't learned nearly as much from Moody as either of them had hoped.

"_Crucio."_

...god. Shit. Yes, she'd been faking.

The pain was excruciating – from the root word, one could surmise as much, of course. It blinded the senses, blacking them out with pure agony, and paralyzed movement by spasming the body. Still – he'd taken this curse before. Had volunteered to take it, in fact, multiple times. Forgetting what it was like was bad. In that area, at least, Moody had kept him prepared.

Blaise clenched his jaw, and stayed on his feet stubbornly. _I'm not a genius_, he thought harshly. _I'm not a prodigy, no matter what Moody says. But god _damn_ it, I can take a curse._

He'd been thrown into being an Auror with no initial training – he'd survived a year that way, and three more _after_, under Moody's watchful eyes. _Who else could do this?_ he asked himself, trying to force a bit of confidence up against the pain. _Moody could. And I can. But Demetria _couldn't.

The mental pep-talk wasn't helping a whole lot... until he realized that it was true. Demetria was looking at him with something akin to white-hot rage, and it was only getting worse with every second he resisted screaming out. She hated him for that diligence, no matter what she said. It was enough to make him bare his teeth at her in a savage smile.

She hissed out another word, then, and he felt the pain redouble itself. Blaise felt himself fall to the floor again – his mouth opened to scream, but he found himself so out of breath that it was impossible to do. Somewhere deep, deep inside the most sarcastic corner of his mind, he found this hilarious.

It took him a second to realize that the pain had gone away. Soon after his limbs started to relax, he realized something else. It was a something that made him suddenly even more terrified than the thought of his own wand and entrail-expelling curses.

_I'm not hallucinating it,_ he thought wildly, breathing hard and fast. _It smells like something – clean. Flowery._

He had no idea what sort of flower Hermione enjoyed making herself smell like. But whatever it was, he had had plenty of time to become familiar with it over the time he'd spent getting as physically close to her as possible. And it was here, at the edge of his senses. _She was still there._

"Take your time," Demetria snarled. "It's not like we're trying to get this done in good time or anything, Blaise." She glanced at the other three Death Eaters with a hiss. "You two." A jerk of the head toward them. "Help me with this idiot. _Yes_, that involves getting your wands out."

Blaise tried, very hard, to ignore the sudden fear that flickered in his stomach. They probably knew. Hell, they'd probably sealed the house on the way inside. They were going to try and lure her out. He had no illusions about Hermione's willingness to endure pain – others' pain, that was. She'd adopted what was probably the ugliest cat in existence, after all. She was _nice_, and it was about to get her killed and also about to screw up what might be a halfway-decent death on his part.

Yes. How insensitive of her.

_I'm going hysterical. Funny. I don't think I've ever experienced this before. How do I know I'm going hysterical? I suppose you just know._

These thoughts flew so quickly through his head that it took him a second to realize he'd begun talking again. Desperately. Ridiculously. Anything to divert attention, to keep Hermione from doing whatever stupid thing she was inevitably thinking of doing.

She was good. There was no doubting she was good.

There were four Death Eaters here. She wasn't _that_ good.

"-operating on a flawed principle here," he found himself saying to them, speaking quickly, tripping words from his tongue as fast as they came to mind. "You seem to think you'll get _Hermione Granger_ to throw herself away on a stupid, sacrificial gambit. The whole wizarding world and their house elves know better than that – or at least, they knew better when she was still household name material. Do you think she hasn't been prepared for exactly this sort of situation?" She hadn't. "Do you think I didn't stop to talk to her, to outline exactly what she ought to do?" He hadn't. God, please let her be listening. "It's my _job_ to die for people. They told me that when I signed up. They told _you_ that when you signed up, Demetria-"

No one was listening, for once. He didn't even know whether Hermione was listening. A second later, he heard the chorus of three voices saying the same word, and after that... well, he couldn't really remember much after that.

Except...

Except that when he recovered his wits – some terrible time later – there were no sounds of battle. No signs of that desperate little attack he'd been halfway expecting.

Silence reigned, for a good few minutes.

"...I expect someone's sobbing invisibly in a corner somewhere," Demetria muttered in disgust. Then, after that pause, there was a heavy sigh. "This is useless. I'm not going to stand here doing this all day." Some gesture he couldn't see. "Barkley. Clean up the trash. We'll wake up the parents next."

They were going to kill him. Blaise realized that, dimly. They were going to kill him, finally, but she'd listened to him, and she hadn't thrown herself away on _his_ account, at least... and...

And he'd won. He'd won just that much, before he died.

A slight smile appeared on his face.

Blaise didn't bother thinking about what dying would feel like. Where he would go – what he might become. Instead, he pulled out a little mental journal of his – a comparatively tiny one that he really very rarely touched. And on the last page of _Blaise Zabini_, he wrote:

_Today: I die like a goddamn Gryffindor._

And really, who the hell cared?

_Well. I really could have done one more thing to her before I kicked it-_ he thought, just a little wickedly.

"_Sterno!"_ Hermione's voice rang out desperately.

Fucking _hell_.


	17. Chapter 17

**Perfect Marks**

**By Rurouni Star**

**A/N: **Odd comment. While writing this chapter, I learned that I love switching wands around.

Also, yes. There _will_ be an Epilogue.

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_Seventeen._

Blaise heard one of the men scream – probably "Barkley", though he hadn't heard of any suspected Death Eaters named Barkley. He opened his eyes quickly, and tried to stagger to his feet, but found himself rather sharply stomped on by some woman's heel. Ah. Demetria. With a wand at his throat.

How cute.

Blaise jerked himself sharply out from under her, just as she was turning to declare another threat on his life (probably). Demetria let out a screech as her legs buckled and gave way, and Blaise noticed her own wand sticking out of a pocket in her sleeve. He kicked his legs out awkwardly at her again, and cheered inwardly as the slim bit of wood fell closer to him. His fingers closed around the wood of the wand – but it took him a good moment to steady their shaking. He realized with a sinking feeling that the _Cruciatus_ curse had left him all but useless (and not a little bit flighty in the head, apparently).

He couldn't tell what was happening with Hermione – and frankly, he didn't expect to be of much help, regardless of her situation. Still, it would be a terrible Auror that didn't _try._

"_Finite Incantatum."_ The ropes that had hindered his movements disappeared, and Blaise rolled to his feet with a hiss of pain, looking about for Demetria. Her hood was there, on the floor, but she had disappeared somewhere in the scuffle. Something hissed by his ear as he looked at it, and Blaise realized that some curse or other had just missed him by a hair's breadth. He staggered for cover, looking for a moment to catch his bearings – the archway seemed appropriate. On the way there, he felt another curse dash past him, and he turned Demetria's wand on the caster without bothering to see who it was. "_Stupefy!"_ The thud that followed gave him momentary hope. _If she took that one down before, that means we only have two more left. Even numbers!_

He should have known better, though. Really.

"Look look!" sang Demetria's voice. "I think I've caught something!"

Dying, Blaise thought morosely, was turning out to be a hell of a lot of work.

000000

"I'm not a fish," Hermione told the woman calmly. This was hard to do, as there was currently a wand being pointed at her neck. A familiar wand, at that. The irony of being killed with Blaise's wand was not lost on her.

"You're about as slippery as one," the Death Eater replied with a pant, her arm tightening around Hermione. "But that's all right. We've finally picked you up, and that's what counts." She paused, momentarily, and Hermione could hear her breathing hard in her ear. "How would you like to be cleaned, then, my little fish?" the Death Eater said more loudly. It was clearly meant to be a jab at Blaise. Hermione could see him about ten feet away, his robes sticking out from where he'd taken cover at the entry to the room.

"With soap and water," Hermione responded promptly. "And good conditioner. My hair frizzes all up if you use the cheap stuff."

It was a testament to the oddity of the situation that she could hear Blaise gasping out a laugh at her terrible joke, off in the next room.

_Clearly, I have been hanging about him for _much _too long,_ Hermione thought to herself. Stupidity in the face of almost-certain death? It was apparently catching.

The woman who had her, on the other hand, was clearly getting upset at the fact that she wasn't being taken seriously. She glanced toward the last Death Eater, who Hermione had struggled with briefly. He (she?) had a bleeding streak down the wand arm of his (her?) robes. Hermione had sunk her teeth in right about there.

"_Incarcerous," _the woman murmured toward Hermione, with a significant look toward the remaining Death Eater. He stepped back where Hermione couldn't see him; she craned her head a bit, trying to keep sight of him, but found it impossible to twist her neck due to the strong cords that had already begun to restrict her movement. "Planning to wait me out, Blaise?" the female Death Eater said, more loudly this time. She was already backing up for cover, dragging Hermione with her as she went. "I'm surprised you haven't already gone for the bold 'take me instead!' plea. That's more the thoughtful Auror thing to do, now, isn't it?"

Hermione saw the edge of Blaise's robe twitch a bit, and she winced. One Auror against two Death Eaters might have been good odds, under other circumstances. But Blaise was currently in unfamiliar territory and recovering from an Unforgivable – and one of the Death Eaters was apparently an Auror herself.

"Please, Demetria." Blaise's voice was surprisingly calm and level for someone who had just taken three _Cruciatus_ curses at once. "You aren't even _trying_ to be serious now." Hermione tried not to be miffed at this, remembering that Blaise's mind was more strategic than to leap to a last-ditch gambit like that. That was more a Harry thing. "She's a genius and a hero. You wouldn't trade her for any Auror – and I'm hardly the best there is."

A sudden chill ran down Hermione's spine at his words. It wasn't even _what_ he was saying... it was how he said it. The perfectly level, reasonable tone he used. It meant he believed it. No, he didn't just believe it – he took it for _granted_. When had that happened? When had he come to the ridiculous conclusion that she was somehow... somehow _worth more_ than he was, in terms of life?

"You wouldn't even suggest such a stupid idea," he drawled out, "unless you were trying to distract me from something."

Blaise's voice went abruptly harsh and low, saying something Hermione couldn't hear. She blinked at the sound of magic firing off, even as Demetria pulled her behind the room's other entryway with a frustrated snarl.

"...your friend is probably going to need a Medi-wizard," Blaise's voice drifted over, finally.

Hermione could feel the woman's hands tightening on her. _Well,_ she thought to herself suddenly. _No need to play the helpful hostage. _"Demetria, was it?" Hermione asked conversationally. "Demi, perhaps? I have a question for you, if you don't mind." Without waiting for an answer, of course, she barreled onward. "You seem to work with Blaise. That would make you an Auror, wouldn't it?" The corners of her mouth turned upward. "I wonder why it is you haven't been able to kill him yet. You had every advantage, after all."

"Shut up, girl," hissed the Death Eater. Demetria's hands tightened further on Hermione, to the point of pain. She ignored it, feeling giddy with danger and an odd sense of pride.

"You haven't managed to take him entirely off guard even once, come to think of it," Hermione continued. "You're _still_ afraid that he's going to beat you at this little game of yours. Because you're not nearly the Auror that _he_ is, are you-"

"_Silencio!"_ Demetria growled out finally, and Hermione found her abilities of distraction abruptly limited.

It had achieved the intended effect, though – Blaise had apparently taken cue from Hermione's voice to start moving around behind them, using the kitchen. At the moment Demetria cast her spell, Hermione heard his voice - "_Expelliarmus!"_

Demetria let out a shriek of surprise as his wand flew out of her hand – and about twenty feet away, across the dining table in the next room. Hermione strained to do something – anything – to distract her attention again, but found this incredibly difficult in her bound and silent state. So it was that she was absolutely helpless to say anything to warn Blaise as Demetria's hand snaked inside her robes to pull Hermione's wand from her sleeve.

A second later, she whirled about, and it was Blaise's turn to be surprised. "_Stupefy!"_ Demetria's voice rang out. Hermione saw him try to dodge, all the same – but the movement was slow and shaky, and she realized that he had been a good deal more affected by the curses than he'd let on.

Pain flickered over Blaise's face, as the curse hit him in the side. For a second, Hermione was hopeful that he'd steady himself, and perhaps return the attack. But then, she saw his knees buckle, and his steps falter – and she knew that when he went down this time, he wasn't going to get back up again.

Thankfully, the door took this lovely, dramatic opportunity to burst open. Again.

Demetria whirled, eyes widening in shock. Hermione would have found it terribly difficult to stifle a manic laugh, except that her voice had magically deserted her.

Five voices yelled various things in nearly the same moment. Hermione was fairly sure that one was a stunning spell, and another sounded somewhat like _Petrificus Totalus_ – but as to the others, they were so oddly mingled that it was hard to say just what they were. Regardless, the result was a mixture of light, sound, and terrible smell – and a vaguely sickening crack! as the Death Eater was thrown back into the wall.

Hermione heard an audible cackle – which she immediately attributed to Mad-Eye Moody, in spite of her rather obstructed point of view.

"Goodness," she heard Ron say. "This one's out cold."

"This one's Hermione," said Harry, with a rustle of silk. "Speaking of."

A murmur later, and Hermione found herself once more free to move and speak. Harry offered a hand down to her, which she took, after retrieving her wand. Her gaze went back toward Blaise's unconscious form, though, and she winced. "I tried to distract them as long as I could," she told Harry weakly, even as she let go of his steadying hand to go check on Blaise.

"Distract?" came George's voice, halfway-incredulous and halfway-amused. "Is that what you call this? This bloke's arm has _teeth marks_ in it!"

Hermione didn't offer a return comment. Blaise was alive, certainly – but he seemed to have acquired a significant bleed from some tiny cut on his face somewhere, and perhaps some broken bones elsewhere if the cracks she'd heard had been any indication.

She frowned, and glanced at Fred and George. "Could you help him, while I go check on my parents?"

"Don't do anything nasty to the kid," Moody growled over at the twins warningly, as they headed over to follow orders bemusedly. "I've got an eye on you." The glass one, apparently. His other was currently occupied with the groaning Demetria. An eyebrow raised when Moody saw her face. "Huh," was all he said in response.

"You still owe us an explanation as to _why_ you dragged him to your parents' house," Ron mumbled, as he heaved up on one of the unconscious Death Eaters.

"You contacted them?" Demetria mumbled, eyes slitting open incredulously. "The... the wards..."

Hermione paused on her way out, in spite of her worry. She stepped back toward Demetria, pausing only when she was close enough to lean in and stare her in the eyes.

"It's called a telephone," Hermione told her. Then, with a thoughtful pause, she added: "Bitch." She punctuated it with a hard kick to the ribs. It only seemed fair.

000000

One of these days, Blaise was going to manage a decent night's sleep. One that didn't begin with a bad curse and didn't end with that funny 'thud thud' of the head you got after throwing around heavy magic (and being thrown around _by_ heavy magic).

That day was not going to be today.

His consciousness had been taking its time going in and out; he had managed to isolate the familiar smell of his hospital room at St. Mungo's, along with the mumble of his deeply discontented Medi-witch ("Again, he comes in? Isn't he supposed to be on vacation?") Occasionally, he was forced to drink something vile-tasting. He recognized one of the potions as a nerve relaxer, and another as a general bone-healing mixture. The nerve relaxer was standard after... ah yes. Magical torture. _Cruciatus_ was of particular concern.

Which meant, his clearing mind told him, that someone had informed the Medi-witch what curses he'd taken. Which meant that either Hermione had survived, or they'd forced a bit of information out of Demetria or her cohorts.

Wait. Hermione.

His eyes blinked open, finally, as his body remembered what his mind already had. The room was quiet, and empty-looking at the moment, but for a chair in the corner with his over robes thrown over it. There were no windows – a result of the extreme security Mungo's kept for certain rooms – but a few magical lamps were equally spaced about the walls, and currently set to low light.

Blaise frowned, replaying the incident. "I'm not dead," he muttered to himself.

A glance around told him comparatively little about the time of day. It could have been days since the fight. Though not more than a week – he wasn't feeling quite dirty enough for that. Nor did he feel as though anyone had taken any cleansing charms to him, which they would have done after... two days. Unless they'd changed procedure here since his last large-scale raid (Mad-Eye's angry tirade over the Medi-witch's handling of his person had been vehement – apparently, she had even removed a few scars while cleaning him up).

Blaise levered himself up from the bed – and blinked as his arms gave out, throwing his head back into the pillow. Apparently, the nerve relaxer had been much stronger this time around. The fact that he could barely feel his fingertips was telling as well.

He was just looking around for his wand with a growingly worried frown when the door opened with a creak.

It was depressingly hard to look combat-ready and vigilant when you were having trouble sitting up at all. Thankfully (or perhaps even more humiliating) Hermione was the only one in the doorway. He first noticed that she was looking quite safe and uninjured (for which he was quite grateful), and second noticed that she had at some point eschewed her own robe for the muggle clothing she'd been wearing beneath it. She met his eyes with a blink; then, calmly, she turned to close the door behind her and moved toward his bed. At first, he thought she was aiming to help him rise, for which he was both thankful and embarrassed. He realized that she had other intentions at about the moment she threw her arms around him and burrowed her face into his chest with a relieved exhalation of breath.

It was a bit uncomfortable. Actually, it was quite uncomfortable. But her hair carried a hint of that smell he'd grown so used to, so he didn't complain.

"...all right," she muttered, letting out another breath and stepping back. "I feel better now."

Blaise blinked at her, and tried to find some words. Something appropriately witty, charming, and suggestive, perhaps. Unfortunately, what came out was: "What time is it?"

Hermione gave him a startled look in the middle of straightening her shirt. "Oh. I... well, it's only been a few hours, actually." Her face turned sheepish. "Moody said you'd be fine, actually, even after I mentioned the- you know, the Unforgivables- but I'm afraid I made them bring you in anyway. Er. Just to be safe."

Blaise frowned. "Your parents?" he asked cautiously.

Hermione paused, frowning deeply and looking troubled. She didn't immediately crumble at the mention, though – which, he thought, was a good sign. "They're... fine, comparatively," she said cautiously. "They were, ah... transfigured into rocks during our fight. To keep them out of the way. My mother is convinced she had a Zen moment."

"And your father?" he asked slowly. "How long was he under the _Imperius?_"

Hermione bit at her lip. "He doesn't know the exact time period," she said softly. "It was at least a week. Apparently, even my mother didn't recognize anything was wrong until he started baiting you."

Blaise sighed. The _Cruciatus_ curse was actually comparatively simple in that it had specific, measurable aftereffects. Having your will stripped from you, though... that could do all kinds of damage. It didn't always show itself immediately, either. Hermione's father was in for a long period of uncomfortable, cautious observation. _Observation_, he thought suddenly, glancing at Hermione. _Speaking of which._

"I'm out of commission," Blaise said. "Who's watching you right now?"

Hermione shifted on her feet a little, not quite meeting his eyes. "...no one," she mumbled. "I told them I didn't want-"

"You didn't want?" Blaise repeated incredulously. He tried to sit up again, but found it just as hard, and only managed to bang the back of his head on the headboard. _Damn procedure and their stupid nerve relaxers,_ he thought briefly. He refocused his irritation onto Hermione. "You just barely escaped with your life, and you told them no bodyguards?"

Hermione frowned at him, and set her hands on her hips. He recognized the position she often took when she was about to vehemently argue a position she knew the other party wouldn't like. She'd done it even at Hogwarts. "St. Mungo's is better guarded than a prison," she said, "and Harry and Ron would have spent the entire time arguing over your unconscious body. _Moody _wanted to revive you and have you walk me home immediately. As for Fred and George-" She cut off abruptly with a shudder. "Never mind. I don't even want to think about them."

Blaise felt his brow furrow. "Fred and George aren't Aurors," he said. "They're not even generally associated with Moody. How did-"

Hermione rubbed at the tip of her nose and looked down. "I, ah." She paused. "I used the telephone. Arthur Weasley was the only one I know with a land line, and George was the one who answered..."

"You... you used a _telephone?_" Blaise repeated slowly.

Hermione gave him an indignant look. "Yes," she said. "I used a telephone. Is there something wrong with that?"

He shook his head, with a bit of effort. "No," he said. "Nothing at all. It's, er. Common sense, really."

Hermione paused at this, apparently considering the words. Her lips turned up, after a moment. "Well," she said. And then again: "Well."

Blaise watched her as she considered the thought. Her cheeks were very slightly pink; her hair was curled at the ends, thrown into a messy ponytail that still managed to spill over her shoulders. In spite of his current irritation with her, he picked up that journal marked _Hermione Granger_ once again, and turned to a certain page near the beginning.

_Circa 8 yrs ago: Hermione Granger is not terribly pretty._

_I was mad when I wrote that,_ he thought to himself. Then, near the end of the little journal, he wrote:

_Today: Under the correct circumstances, Hermione Granger can be breathtakingly gorgeous._

"Hermione," he said aloud. She blinked at him, a bit startled from her musings. Blaise frowned a bit. "Come here," he told her. "Just for a moment."

Hermione complied, a bit confusedly. When she reached the side of the bed, he gave a great effort and pushed himself up – just close enough to lay a finger beneath her chin and pull her lips toward his.

She was surprised enough that she didn't struggle at all – and probably, he thought with inward humor, she was afraid to hurt an injured man further. Her lips were soft, and just slightly parted, and he gave in to the urge to nibble just a little at that lower lip he'd been thinking about for so long. _Being the dubious victor,_ he thought to himself. _I think I deserve this._

Hermione apparently agreed. Blaise found himself surprised as she leaned forward, lifting a hand to curl up behind his neck. She still tasted just a little bit like desperate worry; she moved as though she were waiting for him to disappear, or push her away. He found himself remembering a time in sixth year, sitting in the Great Hall and looking over at her table as she stared at her friends with helpless love and worry in her eyes. _This can't last,_ her manner had suggested. _Something will happen._ He understood it better now. And, he realized, he was a part of it now.

It made him feel oddly warm.

Blaise reached out to snake an arm around her waist; tugging her down with him, savoring the physical closeness and ignoring the dull protest of his still-healing ribs. She complied so easily, so softly and generously, that he suddenly knew he could keep going. He could go exactly as far as he wanted, and she wasn't going to stop him.

She was still terrified for him.

He paused at the realization – he lightened his lips on hers, before brushing them across her cheek, up to her ear. Her breathing caught, a little confused, and he settled a hand at the small of her back to reassure her. "I'm not going to stop keeping company with you," he murmured there, brushing one slightly shaky hand up over her shoulder. "And there is absolutely nothing you can say to convince me otherwise."

Hermione stiffened a little. Caught. "How did you know I was going to ask?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

Blaise shrugged. "That's why you didn't take a bodyguard. You were going to tell me the whole idea is unnecessary, and I should go back to work proper as soon as possible." He tightened his hand on her back, as though to imply that this was not going to work. "We've only captured four people, if they managed every Death Eater there. You told me at least five people had weighed in on that Arithmancy spell."

Hermione slumped a little in defeat. It put a bit more of her weight on him, but thankfully, he had the backboard to brace him now. "You've done more than... more than necessary. I couldn't ask any more of you."

Blaise glanced her over, and resisted the urge to kiss her again. It was a much simpler way of resolving conflict, in general, but it only worked for a short period of time. "You do realize the ridiculousness of saying something like that while you are sitting in my lap?" he asked her simply.

Hermione looked up, startled. She nearly moved herself, but the slightest pressure from his hand was enough to keep her exactly where she was. "Scrimgeour will have noticed something is up now that I've hit Mungo's and four Death Eaters have been taken into custody," Blaise continued to inform her. "And that means Moody will already have moved to have me put into place more officially, before he can throw you into a tiny safehouse in Albania."

Hermione was clearly unhappy with this. This was fine. She'd get over it.

Blaise paused, as he thought of something. "You said some interesting things to me before," he told her. "Right before we left for your parents. Would you like to hear some truth as well?" Hermione was already startled, red, and on her way to miserable, so he didn't wait for her to respond. "At Hogwarts," he told her, "I hated you. I was _unbearably_ jealous of you. I treated you like mud." He paused, as she caught the reference, and opened her mouth to respond- "And when you helped me with Transfiguration – I hated you _more._ I convinced myself you were just being condescending, making yourself feel better by deigning to help one of us lesser entities."

"I- I most certainly-" Hermione struggled indignantly for words.

"No," Blaise agreed. "You weren't. You were doing it because you hated seeing someone struggle when you knew you could help. You still do it. It's a wonderful quality of yours."

This shut her up. He was quite satisfied to see her speechless, because it was hard enough to stagger through this awkward revelation as it was.

"I went through a lot of trouble to become an Auror," he said. "It nearly killed me more than a few times. But at the end of the day, I always had to admit to myself that I never would have made it even as far as I had if you hadn't offered your help back then." Hermione's brow knit at that. Blaise shrugged. "...so when Moody mentioned this problem of yours, I volunteered. I wanted out of your shadow. I wanted to show myself I'd outgrown needing your help." He paused. And then, though it _hurt_, he added: "Perhaps I wanted to show you as well."

Hermione was silent for a while. Then: "I can't take credit for anything you've done. That's ridiculous. And you haven't owed me a thing for some time now."

Blaise considered this seriously for a moment. "Actually," he said. "I do." And he leaned down to kiss her again, just a little bit harder, before pulling back by inches. "Thank you."

Hermione's face, already flushed, went absolutely beet red. Blaise found he couldn't resist a slight smirk at the sight. He was already thinking of ways he could make her go absolutely crimson.

She spent a moment collecting herself, before straightening and nodding at some thought or other. "...you owe me a game of Scrabble too," she said finally. Her fingers curled in his shirt as she pressed herself against him with narrowed eyes. "...I was about to win."

Blaise blinked in shock, and felt his face heat up at her tone in spite of himself. Hermione kissed him full and hard, then, and he remembered too late that she was a very quick learner.

Her hand tangled in his hair, then, and he felt her make the most interesting whimper into his mouth. Very shortly, he decided to throw away his little mental journals while his fingers brushed along her spine, exacting a shiver from her.

_I'll take notes later._


	18. Chapter 18

**Perfect Marks  
By Rurouni Star**

**A/N: **Apologies for the incredible lateness of the epilogue. I was always pretty sure that it was going to take a while for me to get around to it, but life exceeded even my own very generous expectations. Worry not. I always try to finish what I start.

But in the spirit of new things: how many of you have played Neverwinter Nights before? I'm contemplating a terribly dangerous avenue there. _Hordes of the Underdark_ needs a fanfic, because of its sheer awesomeness. But such a thing would also require an original character, being as it doesn't have a specific hero. _DANGEROUS, _I say. And probably, I'll give in and do it anyway. So for anyone who hasn't played Neverwinter Nights, I will say this: I'll do my best to avoid confusing the hell out of you. Read it anyway.

Without further ado: your epilogue.

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_Epilogue._

"I cannot _believe_ you're here."

Blaise glanced up idly from the book in his hand (_Common Potions Mistakes: 999 Recipes for Disaster!_) and slowly raised one eyebrow. "That's funny," he said. "As I distinctly remember Moody telling you that I was officially assigned to the job."

"Yes... but..." Hermione sputtered, somewhat lamely. "But this isn't precisely what I was expecting."

Blaise felt his mouth twitch slightly at the edges, as he reached up to shelve the book between two similar titles. "What, is there some other requirement I'm unaware of, to be an assistant librarian? Do I need to go find myself an Order of Merlin first?" He glanced over toward Simone, with feigned interest. "Does _she_ have one?" The woman's eyes widened at his gaze; she immediately ducked herself out of view, behind a book cart.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. She tapped her fingers at her hip. She pursed her lips with disapproval, and opened her mouth to say something, no doubt _scathing_–

"I see you're wearing a shorter skirt today," Blaise added, interrupting her. His lips curved further upward, and his eyes dropped to her calves rather blatantly. "I _do_ love looking at your legs. I wonder if you took that into account?"

Hermione froze, her mouth halfway open. He saw her struggle, as she was forced abruptly to go from offensive to defensive. "That- that is neither here nor-" Her eyes narrowed again, as she realized what he'd done. "Would you _stop_ that?" she demanded, eyes flashing beneath her mousy hair. "I swear, it is _impossible_ to have a normal conversation with you!"

Blaise grinned, behind another stack of books. "I know. Sensible women just _hate_ being complimented. I'd try to tone it down, except– well, no guarantees while you're showing that much skin."

Hermione colored slightly– huffed loudly, to cover it. "I don't hate being complimented! I was referring to– you know what? Never mind. We both know how this will end anyway."

"Really?" Blaise said. "But wouldn't that be somewhat inappropriate, in a public place like this–"

Hermione picked up another pile of books from the cart, and slammed it down on top of the pile he was carrying already. Blaise coughed, and felt his knees buckle slightly, as she leaned around the stack to look him in the eyes. "Work _first_," she said severely. "Play _later._"

As far as suggestive come-ons went, it was somewhat less than seductive. It still made him groan to himself, as he watched her turn and walk away. The shift ended in eight hours. This... was _far_ too long. Especially with that damned skirt swishing around her legs like that.

Blaise was, in fact, just contemplating the distance to lunch, and the possible willingness of the woman, when he found his thoughts interrupted by the most terrifying sound imaginable.

"_No,_ dem it all! I will _not_ surrender my wand! And why are you asking, I'd like to know! Why is it you suddenly want me defenseless, eh? I can already see you're not lookin' me in the eye, that's tellin', right there-!"

Blaise promptly set down his tower of books, and headed over to diffuse the situation.

Poor Simone was standing in the doorway, trying in vain to placate the force of nature that was Moody. The other Auror was gesturing madly, waving his arms in large, sweeping movements.

"I think she's afraid you might burn the place down," Blaise observed dryly, brushing a bit of dust from his hands. "You look like some crazy madman, in off a street corner."

Moody bristled at that, turning his gaze toward his old apprentice. "I do _not_ live on any old street corner!" he said. "Patchwork robes were all the rage twenty years ago, I tell you!"

Blaise grinned, as Simone politely fled. "I take it you've got news for me," he said.

Moody frowned, and crossed his arms. "...Stibbons was gone. Cleared out long a'fore we even knocked on his door. But we got him clear on the run now. Not many places he's going to be able to hide."

"Stibbons?" Hermione's voice said, from behind him. Blaise held back a twitch. It was a sad day, he thought, that Hermione Granger could sneak up on _him_ instead of the other way around. "Where have I heard that name before?"

"Where have you heard–" Blaise sighed, and pressed a hand to his face as he turned to look at her. "_Stibbons._ The Ravenclaw that nearly mauled you with dark magic in sixth year. How did you manage to forget something like that?"

Hermione colored, and crossed her arms uncomfortably. "Well. Ah. A lot of people nearly mauled me with dark magic. In sixth year." Her tone was somewhat apologetic. It was at once so chilling and so adorable that he had to keep himself from tugging her close and kissing her on the nose.

"Hunch was right on the nose," Moody growled, apparently oblivious to the sudden, growing subtext. "Boy was more'n smart enough to plan something like this. Even took Arithmancy, straight up to NEWT level. _And_ I dug up a near-conviction for being a Deatheater, once upon a time. Apparently, they let him go and chalked the whole thing up to being a stupid kid."

Blaise nodded slowly, grimly. "It seemed like a long shot at first, but it made more sense the more I thought about it. You think you can keep him uncomfortable enough that he won't try anything else?"

Moody shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "Criminals get desperate. I figure we'll have him within the month, though. After that, you'll be able to head back to active duty, with the occasional check-in on our Miss Granger."

"Ah, good," Blaise smiled. "I don't have to stop annoying her _completely_, then."

"I doubt," Hermione huffed, "that you will _ever_ stop annoying me, Zabini." There was a tiny, affectionate undertone to her voice that said _You won't really, will you?_

Moody nodded, and turned to leave. He had never quite mastered the art of ending a conversation properly. Probably because his conversations ended so bizarrely, so often. He paused on his way out, though, and looked back at Hermione with one narrowed eye.

"By the way," he said. "We've intercepted a letter to you from some Patil woman. Do you want it, or should I burn it?"

Hermione's face went absolutely, crimson _red._

"No," she squeaked. "No, I'll... I'll take it." Moody grinned fiercely, and tugged said letter from a pocket in his robes. When he offered it out to her, Hermione snatched it from him, as though she were being prodded with hot coals. Moody nodded once, sharp, as she stuffed it into her own pocket. "Good day, Miss Granger," he said, and he moved once again for the door. Simone peeked out from the break room shortly after it closed behind him.

Blaise watched Hermione with interest, as she played self-consciously with a stray thread on her shirt. "Something I ought to know about?" he asked her, with a twitch of the lips.

"Absolutely _not_," she declared, staring at the thread. "Not ever."

He expanded his smile slowly, and decided he'd get it out of her later.

0-0-0-0-0-0

Blaise walked her home, after work– it was nice and thoughtful, if you forgot the fact that it was currently necessary.

_Necessary,_ Hermione thought grimly, as she unlocked her front door. _That's what all of this is. Once he's off doing good deeds elsewhere again, we won't be seeing each other quite so much. And what will happen then?_

Circumstances had been dangerous, bold and invigorating. It was only natural they should have ended up attracted to each other. And really, his behavior hadn't changed all _that _much, except that he was a bit more blatant in his flirting, and he would occasionally nibble at her ear, even in public–

_And why am I complaining again?_ she thought to herself with a sigh. _It's not like this has to be serious. Not everything has to be serious._

No. Not everything. But _this_ had to be. She wanted it like she'd never wanted anything else. She wanted to know him better, to learn what else he kept underneath that dark humor of his. She wanted to learn his patience, to marvel at his grim determination, to kiss the frowns that appeared on his face when he thought about things too hard. She wanted to wake up sleepy and warm, with his breath on her neck.

_Is that too much?_ she wondered to herself nervously. _Is it bad, to be thinking like that?_

Blaise closed the door behind them; took the time to deadbolt it, carefully. "The wards are still in good working order," he observed. "But I think we might want to recast a few later, before I leave. There's always room for improvement."

Hermione shifted on her feet a little, at the mention of his departure. She very carefully avoided speaking, hoping that he would give her something else to talk about instead.

"Do you want to have some wine tonight?" he obliged her, with a sudden smile.

Hermione felt herself smile back, more relieved than anything else. "I think so," she agreed.

His hand slipped around her waist with a casual, warming sort of affection. "And Scrabble?" he mumbled to her. Hermione flushed at his tone, but felt herself lean into the touch. This was a good place to be, right at this moment.

She leaned her lips up to his ear, feeling bold. "I will _destroy_ you at Scrabble, Mr. Zabini."

Blaise turned to give her a half-tilted smile. "I expect I'll still enjoy it," he said. And to Hermione's shock and puzzlement, she heard him say it with a voice devoid of anything like humor, or sarcasm, or suggestiveness. In fact, she thought, it almost sounded as though he meant it for what it was.

She couldn't have known, of course, that he was putting a closing thought on his journal of observations regarding her. _Hermione Granger,_ he was writing, _is the most amazing creature in the universe. And one day soon, I am going to marry her._

"Wine _after_ Scrabble," he said to her wryly.


End file.
